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uC  SOUTHERN  REGlONA!   LIBRARY  FACILITY 

mil  ill 

ANTICIPATIONS 

OF  THE  REACTION  OF  MECHAN- 
ICAL AND  SCIENTIFIC  PROGRESS 
UPON    HUMAN    LIFE    AND    THOUGHT 


BY 

H.   G.  WELLS 

AUTHOR     OF     "WHEN     THE     SLEEPER     WAKES" 
"THE    WAR    OF    THE    WORLDS"    "THE    INVISIBLE    MAN" 


HARPER     &     BROTHERS 
NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON        1902 


Copyright,  1901,  by  Thk  North  American  Rbvibw  Publishing  Co. 

Atl  rights  nstrvicL 
Published  February,  1902. 


CONTENTS 

rAGK 

Locomotion  in  the  Twentieth  Century     ...  3 

The  Probable  Diffusion  of  Great  Citibs     ...  39 

Developing  Social  Elements 75 

Certain  Social  Reactions 115 

The  Life-History  of  Democracy 157 

War  in  the  Twentieth  Century 193 

The  Conflict  of  Languages 235 

The  Larger  Synthesis 267 

Faith,    Morals,    and    Public    Policy    in     the 

Twentieth  Century 303 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Archive 

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LOCOMOTION  IN  THE  TWENTIETH 
CENTURY 


LOCOMOTION  IN  THE  TWENTIETH 
CENTURY 


IT  is  proposed  in  this  book  to  present,  in  as  orderly 
an  arrangement  as  the  necessarily  diffused 
nature  of  the  subject  admits,  certain  speculations 
about  the  trend  of  present  forces,  speculations . 
which,  taken  all  together,  will  build  up  an  imperfect 
and  very  hypothetical  but  sincerely  intended  fore- 
cast of  the  way  things  will  probably  go  in  this  new 
century.*  Necessarily  diffidence  will  be  one  of  the 
graces  of  the  performance.  Hitherto  such  fore- 
casts have  been  presented  almost  invariably  in 
the  form  of  fiction,  and  commonly  the  provocation 
of  the  satirical  opportunity  has  been  too  much 
for  the  writer,  t    The  narrative  form  becomes  more 

*  In  the  earlier  papers  of  which  this  is  the  first,  attention  will 
be  given  to  the  probable  development  of  the  civilized  community 
in  general.  Afterwards  these  generalizations  will  be  modified  in 
accordance  with  certain  broad  differences  of  race,  custom,  and 
religion. 

t  Of  quite  serious  forecasts  and  inductions  of  things  to  come, 
the  number  is  very  small  indeed  ;  a  suggestion  or  so  of  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer's,  Mr.  Kidd's  Social  Evolution,  some  hints  from  Mr. 
Archdall  Reid,  some  political  forecasts,  German  for  the  most 
part  (Hartmann's  Earth  in  the  Ttventieth  Century,  e.g.),  some 


ANTICIPATIONS 

and  more  of  a  nuisance  as  the  speculative  induc- 
tions become  sincerer,  and  here  it  will  be  abandoned 
altogether  in  favor  of  a  texture  of  frank  inquiries 
and  arranged  considerations.  Our  utmost  aim  is 
a  rough  sketch  of  the  coming  time,  a  prospectus, 
as  it  were,  of  the  joint  undertaking  of  mankind 
in  facing  these  impending  years.  The  reader  is 
a  prospective  shareholder  —  he  and  his  heirs  — 
though  whether  he  will  find  this  anticipatory 
balance-sheet  to  his  belief  or  liking  is  another 
matter. 

For  reasons  that  will  develop  themselves  more 
clearly  as  these  papers  unfold,  it  is  extremely  con- 
venient to  begin  with  a  speculation  upon  the  prob- 
able developments  and  changes  of  the  means  of 
land  locomotion  during  the  coming  decades.     No 

incidental  forecasts  by  Professor  Langley  (Century  Magazine, 
December,  1884,  e.g.),  and  such  isolated  computations  as  Pro- 
fessor Crookes's  wheat  warning,  and  the  various  estimates  of 
our  coal  supply,  make  almost  a  complete  bibliography.  Of 
fiction,  of  course,  there  is  abundance :  Stories  of  the  Year  2000, 
and  Battles  of  Dorking,  and  the  like — I  learn  from  Mr.  Peddie, 
the  bibliographer,  over  one  hundred  pamphlets  and  books  of  that 
description.  But  from  its  very  nature,  and  I  am  writing  with  the 
intimacy  of  one  who  has  tried,  fiction  can  never  be  satisfactory 
in  this  application.  Fiction  is  necessarily  concrete  and  definite ; 
it  permits  of  no  open  alternatives ;  its  aim  of  illusion  prevents  a 
proper  amplitude  of  demonstration,  and  modern  prophecy 
should  be,  one  submits,  a  branch  of  speculation,  and  should 
follow  with  all  decorum  the  scientific  method.  The  very 
form  of  fiction  carries  with  it  something  of  disavowal ;  in- 
deed, very  much  of  the  Fiction  of  the  Future  pretty  frankly 
abandons  the  prophetic  altogether,  and  becomes  polemical, 
cautionary,  or  idealistic,  and  a  mere  footnote  and  c<Hnmentary 
to  our  present  discontents. 


LOCOMOTION    IN    THE   TWENTIETH    CENTURY 

one  who  has  studied  the  civil  history  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  will  deny  how  far-reaching  the  con- 
sequences of  changes  in  transit  may  be,  and  no 
one  who  has  studied  the  military  performances 
of  General  Buller  and  General  De  Wet  but  will 
see  that  upon  transport,  upon  locomotion,  may 
also  hang  the  most  momentous  issues  of  politics 
and  war.  The  growth  of  our  great  cities,  the  rapid 
populating  of  America,  the  entry  of  China  into  the 
field  of  European  politics,  are,  for  example,  quite 
obviously  and  directh'^  consequences  of  new  methods 
of  locomotion.  And  while  so  much  hangs  upon 
the  development  of  these  methods  that  develop- 
ment is,  on  the  other  hand,  a  process  comparatively 
independent — now,  at  any  rate — of  most  of  the  other 
great  movements  affected  by  it.  It  depends  upon  a 
sequence  of  ideas  arising,  and  of  experiments 
made,  and  upon  laws  of  political  economy,  almost 
as  inevitable  as  natural  laws.  Such  great  issues, 
supposing  them  to  be  possible,  as  the  return  of 
Western  Europe  to  the  Roman  communion,  the 
overthrow  of  the  British  Empire  by  Germany,  or  the 
inundation  of  Europe  by  the  "Yellow  Peril," 
might  conceivably  affect  such  details,  let  us  say, 
as  door-handles  and  ventilators  or  mileage  of  line, 
but  would  probably  leave  the  essential  features  of 
the  evolution  of  locomotion  untouched.  The  evolu- 
tion of  locomotion  has  a  purely  historical  relaticm 
to  the  Western  European  peoples.  It  is  no  longer 
dependent  upon  them,  or  exclusively  in  their  hands. 

5 


ANTICIPATIONS 

The  Malay  nowadays  sets  out  upon  his  pilgrimage 
to  Mecca  in  an  excursion  steamship  of  iron,  and 
the  immemorial  Hindoo  goes  a'-shopping  in  a 
train,  and  in  Japan  and  Australasia  and  America 
there  are  plentiful  hands  and  minds  to  take  up 
the  process  now,  even  should  the  European  let 
it  fall. 

The  beginning  of  this  twentieth  century  happens 
to  coincide  with  a  very  interesting  phase  in  that 
great  development  of  means  of  land  transit  that 
has  been  the  distinctive  feature  (speaking  ma- 
terially) of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  nine- 
teenth century,  when  it  takes  its  place  with  the 
other  centuries  in  the  chronological  charts  of  the 
future,  will,  if  it  needs  a  symbol,  almost  inevitably 
have  as  that  symbol  a  steam-engine  running 
upon  a  railway.  This  period  covers  the  first 
experiments,  the  first  great  developments,  and  the 
complete  elaboration  of  that  mode  of  transit,  and 
the  determination  of  nearly  all  the  broad  features 
of  this  century's  history  may  be  traced  directly 
or  indirectly  to  that  process.  And  since  an  in- 
teresting light  is  thrown  upon  the  new  phases 
in  land  locomotion  that  are  now  beginning,  it 
will  be  well  to  begin  this  forecast  with  a  retro- 
spect, and  to  revise  very  shortly  the  history  of 
the  addition  of  steam  travel  to  the  resources  of 
mankind. 

A  curious  and  profitable  question  arises  at 
once.     How  is  it  that  the  steam  locomotive    ap- 

6 


LOCOMOTION   IN    THE    TWENTIETH   CENTURY 

peared  at  the  time  it  did,  and  not  earlier  in    the 
history  of  the  world? 

Because  it  was  not  invented.  But  why  was 
it  not  invented?  Not  for  want  of  a  crowning 
intellect,  for  none  of  the  many  minds  concerned 
in  the  development  strikes  one — as  the  mind  of 
Newton,  Shakespeare,  or  Darwin  strikes  one — 
as  being  that  of  an  unprecedented  man.  It  is 
not  that  the  need  for  the  railway  and  steam-engine 
had  only  just  arisen,  and — to  use  one  of  the  most 
egregiously  wrong  and  misleading  phrases  that 
ever  dropped  from  the  lips  of  man — the  demand 
created  the  supply;  it  was  quite  the  other  way 
about.  There  was  really  no  urgent  demand  for 
such  things  at  the  time;  the  current  needs  of  the 
European  world  seem  to  have  been  fairly  well 
served  by  coach  and  diligence  in  1800,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  every  administrator  of  intelligence 
in  the  Roman  and  Chinese  empires  must  have 
felt  an  urgent  need  for  more  rapid  methods  of 
transit  than  those  at  his  disposal.  Nor  was  the 
development  of  the  steam  locomotive  the  result 
of  any  sudden  discovery  of  steam.  Steam,  and 
something  of  the  mechanical  possibilities  of 
steam,  had  been  known  for  two  thousand  years; 
it  had  been  used  for  pumping  water,  opening 
doors,  and  working  toys  before  the  Christian 
era.  It  may  be  urged  that  this  advance  was  the 
outcome  of  that  new  and  more  systematic  handling 
of  knowledge  initiated  by  Lord  Bacon  and  sus- 

7 


ANTICIPATIONS 

tained  by  the  Royal  Society;  but  this  does  not 
appear  to  have  been  the  case,  though  no  doubt 
the  new  habits  of  mind  that  spread  outward  from 
that  centre  played  their  part.  The  men  whose 
names  are  cardinal  in  the  history  of  this  develop- 
ment invented,  for  the  most  part,  in  a  quite  em- 
pirical way,  and  Trevithick's  engine  was  running 
along  its  rails  and  Evan's  boat  was  walloping 
up  the  Hudson  a  quarter  of  a  century  before 
Camot  expounded  his  general  proposition.  There 
were  no  such  deductions  from  principles  to  applica- 
tion as  occur  in  the  story  of  electricity  to  justify 
our  attribution  of  the  steam-engine  to  the  scientific 
impulse.  Nor  does  this  particular  invention 
seem  to  have  been  directly  due  to  the  new  pos- 
sibilities of  reducing,  shaping,  and  casting  iron, 
afforded  by  the  substitution  of  coal  for  wood  in  iron 
works,  through  the  greater  temperature  afforded 
by  a  coal  fire.  In  China  coal  has  been  used  in  the 
reduction  of  iron  for  many  centuries.  No  doubt 
these  new  facilities  did  greatly  help  the  steam- 
engine  in  its  invasion  of  the  field  of  common  life, 
but  quite  certainly  they  were  not  sufficient  to  set 
it  going.  It  was,  indeed,  not  one  cause,  but  a 
very  complex  and  unprecedented  series  of  causes, 
set  the  steam  locomotive  going.  It  was  indirectly, 
and  in  another  way,  that  the  introduction  of  coal 
became  the  decisive  factor.  One  peculiar  con- 
dition of  its  production  in  England  seems  to 
have  supplied  just  one  ingredient  that  had  been 

8 


LOCOMOTION   IN   THE    TWENTIETH   CENTURY 

missing  for  two  thousand  years  in  the  group  of 
conditions  that  were  necessary  before  the  steam 
locomotive  could  appear. 

This  missing  ingredient  was  a  demand  for 
some  comparatively  simple,  profitable  machine, 
upon  which  the  elementary  principles  of  steam 
utilization  could  be  worked  out.  If  one  studies 
Stephenson's  "Rocket"  in  detail,  as  one  realizes 
its  profound  complexity,  one  begins  to  understand 
how  impossible  it  would  have  been  for  that  struct- 
ure to  have  come  into  existence  de  novo,  however 
urgently  the  world  had  need  of  it.  But  it  happened 
that  the  coal  needed  to  replace  the  dwindling  forests 
of  this  small  and  exceptionally  rain  -  saturated . 
country  occurs  in  low,  hollow  basins  overlying 
clay,  and  not,  as  in  China  and  the  Alleghanies, 
for  example,  on  high-lying  outcrops,  that  can  be 
worked  as  chalk  is  worked  in  England.  From 
this  fact  it  followed  that  some  quite  unprecedented 
pumping  appliances  became  necessary,  and  the 
thoughts  of  practical  men  were  turned  thereby 
to  the  long-neglected  possibilities  of  steam.  Wind 
was  extremely  inconvenient  for  the  purpose  of 
pumping,  because  in  these  latitudes  it  is  incon- 
stant: it  was  costly,  too,  because  at  any  time  the 
laborers  might  be  obliged  to  sit  al  the  pit's  mouth 
for  weeks  together,  whistling  for  a  gale  or  waiting 
for  the  water  to  be  got  under  again.  But  steam 
had  already  been  used  for  pumping  upon  one  or 
two  estates  in  England — rather  as  a  toy  than  in 

9 


ANTICIPATIONS 

earnest — before  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  the  attempt  to  employ  it  was  so 
obvious  as  to  be  practically  unavoidable.*  The 
water  trickling  into  the  coal  measures!  acted,  there- 
fore, like  water  trickling  upon  chemicals  that  have 
long  been  mixed  together,  dry  and  inert.  Im- 
mediately the  latent  reactions  were  set  going. 
Savery,  Newcomen,  a  host  of  other  workers  cul- 
minating in  Watt,  working  always  by  steps  that 
were  at  least  so  nearly  obvious  as  to  give  rise  again 
and  again  to  simultaneous  discoveries,  changed 
this  toy  of  steam  into  a  real,  a  commercial  thing, 
developed  a  trade  in  pumping  -  engines,  created 
foundries  and  a  new  art  of  engineering,  and,  al- 
most unconscious  of  what  they  were  doing,  made 
the  steam  locomotive  a  well-nigh  unavoidable 
consequence.  At  last,  after  a  century  of  improve- 
ment on  pumping-engines,  there  remained  nothing 
but  the  very  obvious  stage  of  getting  the  engine 
that  had  been  developed  on  wheels  and  out  upon 
the  ways  of  the  world. 

Ever  and  again  during  the  eighteenth  century 
an  engine  would  be  put  upon  the  roads  and  pro- 
nounced a  failure — one  monstrous  Palseoferric 
creature  was  visible  on  a  French  high-road  as 
early  as  1769 — but  by  the  dawn  of  the  nineteenth 
century  the  problem  had  very   nearly   got   itself 

*  It  might  have  been  used  in  the  same  way  in  Italy  in  tlie  first 
century,  had  not  the  grandiose  taste  for  aqueducts  prevailed, 
t  And  also  into  the  Cornwall  mines,  be  it  noted. 

10 


LOCOMOTION    IN    THE    TWENTIETH    CENTURY 

solved.  By  1804  Trevithick  had  a  steam  locomo- 
tive indisputably  in  motion  and  almost  financially 
possible,  and  from  his  hands  it  puffed  its  way, 
slowly  at  first,  and  then,  under  Stephenson,  faster 
and  faster,  to  a  transitory  empire  over  the  earth. 
It  was  a  steam  locomotive — but  for  all  that  it 
was  primarily  a  steam-engine  for  pmnping  adapted 
to  a  new  end;  it  was  a  steam-engine  whose  an- 
cestral stage  had  developed  under  conditions 
that  were  by  no  means  exacting  in  the  matter 
of  weight.  And  from  that  fact  followed  a  con- 
sequence that  has  hampered  railway  travel  and 
transport  very  greatly,  and  that  is  tolerated  nowa- 
days only  through  a  belief  in  its  practical  necessity.  ■ 
The  steam  locomotive  was  all  too  huge  and  heavy 
for  the  high-road — it  had  to  be  put  upon  rails. 
And  so  clearly  linked  are  steam-engines  and  rail- 
ways in  our  minds,  that,  in  common  language 
now,  the  latter  implies  the  former.  But,  indeed, 
it  is  the  result  of  accidental  impediments,  of  avoid- 
able difficulties,  that  we  travel  to-day  on  rails. 

Railway  travelling  is  at  best  a  compromise. 
The  quite  conceivable  ideal  of  locomotive  con- 
venience, so  far  as  travellers  are  concerned,  is 
surely  a  highly  mobile  conveyance  capable  of 
travelling  easily  and  swiftly  to  any  desired  point, 
traversing,  at  a  reasonably  controlled  pace,  the 
ordinary  roads  and  streets,  and  having  access 
for  higher  rates  of  speed  and  long-distance  travel- 
ling to  specialized  ways  restricted  to  swift  traffic 

II 


ANTICIPATIONS 

and  possibly  furnished  with  guide  rails.  For 
the  collection  and  delivery  of  all  sorts  of  perishable 
goods  also  the  same  system  is  obviously  altogether 
superior  to  the  existing  methods.  Moreover,  such 
a  system  would  admit  of  that  secular  progress 
in  engines  and  vehicles  that  the  stereotyped  con- 
ditions of  the  railway  have  almost  completely 
arrested,  because  it  would  allow  almost  any  new 
pattern  to  be  put  at  once  upon  the  ways  without 
interference  with  the  established  traffic.  Had 
such  an  ideal  been  kept  in  view  from  the  first,  the 
traveller  would  now  be  able  to  get  through  his 
long-distance  journeys  at  a  pace  of  from  seventy 
miles  or  more  an  hour  without  changing,  and 
without  any  of  the  trouble,  waiting,  expense, 
and  delay  that  arise  between  the  household  or 
hotel  and  the  actual  rail.  It  was  an  ideal  that 
must  have  been  at  least  possible  to  an  intelligent 
person  fifty  years  ago,  and,  had  it  been  resolutely 
pursued,  the  world,  instead  of  fumbling  from 
compromise  to  compromise  as  it  always  has  done, 
and  as  it  will  do  very  probably  for  many  centuries 
yet,  might  have  been  provided  to-day,  not  only 
with  an  infinitely  more  practicable  method  of 
communication,  but  with  one  capable  of  a  steady 
and  continual  evolution  from  year  to  year. 

But  there  was  a  more  obvious  path  of  develop- 
ment and  one  immediately  cheaper,  and  along 
that  path  went  short-sighted  Nineteenth  Century 
Progress,  quite  heedless  of  the  possibility  of  end- 

12 


LOCOMOTION    IN    THE    TWENTIETH    CENTURY 

ing  in  a  cul-de-sac.  The  first  locomotives,  apart 
from  the  heavy  tradition  of  their  ancestry,  were, 
like  all  experimental  machinery,  needlessly  clumsy 
and  heavy,  and  their  inventors,  being  men  of 
insufficient  faith,  instead  of  working  for  light- 
ness and  smoothness  of  motion,  took  the  easier 
course  of  placing  them  upon  the  tramways  that 
were  already  in  existence — chiefly  for  the  transit 
of  heavy  goods  over  soft  roads.  And  from  that 
followed  a  very  interesting  and  curious  result. 

These  tram-lines  very  naturally  had  exactly 
the  width  of  an  ordinary  cart,  a  width  prescribed 
by  the  strength  of  one  horse.  Few  people  saw 
in  the  locomotive  anything  but  a  cheap  substitute 
for  horseflesh,  or  found  anything  incongruous 
in  letting  the  dimensions  of  a  horse  determine 
the  dimensions  of  an  engine.  It  mattered  nothing 
that  from  the  first  the  passenger  was  ridiculously 
cramped,  hampered,  and  crowded  in  the  carriage. 
He  had  always  been  cramped  in  a  coach,  and  it 
would  have  seemed  "Utopian" — a  very  dreadful 
thing  indeed  to  our  grandparents — to  propose 
travel  without  cramping.  By  mere  inertia  the 
horse-cart  gauge — the  4  ft.  8^  in.  gauge — nemine 
contradicente,  established  itself  in  the  world, 
and  now  everywhere  the  train  is  dwarfed  to  a 
scale  that  limits  alike  its  comfort,  power,  and 
speed.  Before  every  engine,  as  it  were,  trots 
the  ghost  of  a  superseded  horse,  refuses  most 
resolutely  to  trot  faster  than  fifty  miles  an  hour, 

13 


ANTICIPATIONS 

and  shies  and  threatens  catastrophe  at  every 
point  and  curve.  That  fifty  miles  an  hour, 
most  authorities  are  agreed,  is  the  Umit  of  our 
speed  for  land  travel  so  far  as  existing  conditions 
go.*  Only  a  revolutionary  reconstruction  of  the 
railways  or  the  development  of  some  new  com- 
peting method  of  land  travel  can  carry  us  beyond 
that. 

People  of  to-day  take  the  railways  for  granted 
as  they  take  sea  and  sky;  they  were  bom  in  a 
railway  world,  and  they  expect  to  die  in  one.  But 
if  only  they  will  strip  from  their  eyes  the  most 
blinding  of  all  influences,  acquiescence  in  the 
familiar,  they  will  see  clearly  enough  that  this 
vast  and  elaborate  railway  system  of  ours,  by 
which  the  whole  world  is  linked  together,  is  really 
only  a  vast  system  of  trains  of  horse-wagons  and 
coaches  drawn  along  rails  by  pumping  -  engines 
upon  wheels.  Is  that,  in  spite  of  its  present  vast 
extension,  likely  to  remain  the  predominant  method 
of  land  locomotion,  even  for  so  short  a  period  as 
the  next  hundred  years? 

Now,  so  much  capital  is    represented    by   the 

•  It  might  be  worse.  If  the  biggest  horses  had  been  Shetland 
ponies,  we  should  be  travelHng  now  in  railway  carriages  to 
hold  two  each  side  at  a  taaximum  speed  of  perhaps  twenty  miles 
an  hour.  There  is  hardly  any  reason,  beyond  this  tradition 
of  the  horse,  why  the  railway  carriage  should  not  be  even  nine 
or  ten  feet  wide,  the  width,  that  is,  of  the  smallest  room  in  which 
people  can  live  in  comfort,  hung  on  such  springs  and  wheels 
as  would  effectually  destroy  all  vibration,  and  furnished  with 
all  the  equipment  of  comfortable  chambers. 

14 


LOCOMOTION    IN   THE    TWENTIETH    CENTURY 

existing  type  of  railways,  and  they  have  so  stable 
an  establishment  in  the  acquiescence  of  men, 
that  it  is  very  doubtful  if  the  railways  will  ever 
attempt  any  very  fundamental  change  in  the 
direction  of  greater  speed  or  facility,  unless  they 
are  first  exposed  to  the  pressure  of  our  second 
alternative,  competition,  and  we  may  very  well 
go  on  to  inquire  how  long  will  it  be  before  that 
second  alternative  comes  into  operation  —  if  ever 
it  is  to  do  so. 

Let  us  consider  what  other  possibilities  seem  to 
offer  themselves.  Let  us  revert  to  the  ideal  we 
have  already  laid  down,  and  consider  what  hopes 
and  obstacles  to  its  attainment  there  seem  to  be- 
The  abounding  presence  of  numerous  experimental 
motors  to-day  is  so  stimulating  to  the  imagina- 
tion, there  are  so  many  stimulated  persons  at 
work  upon  them,  that  it  is  difficult  to  believe  the 
obvious  impossibility  of  most  of  them,  their  con- 
vulsiveness,  clumsiness,  and — in  many  cases — 
exasperating  trail  of  stench  will  not  be  rapidly 
fined  away.*    I  do  not  think  that  it  is  asking  too 

*  Explosives  as  a  motive  power  were  first  attempted  by  Huy- 
ghens  and  one  or  two  others  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and, 
just  as  witli  the  turbine  type  of  apparatus,  it  was  probably  the 
impetus  given  to  the  development  of  steam  by  the  convenient 
collocation  of  coal  and  water  and  the  need  of  an  engine  that 
arrested  the  advance  of  this  parallel  inquiry  until  our  own  time. 
Explosive  engines,  in  which  gas  and  petroleum  are  employed, 
are  now  abundant,  but  for  all  that  we  can  regard  the  explosive 
engine  as  still  in  its  exjjerimental  stages.  So  far,  research  in 
explosives  has  been  directed  chiefly  to  the  possibilities  of  higher 

15 


ANTICIPATIONS 

much  of  the  reader's  faith  in  progress  to  assume 
that  so  far  as  a  hght,  powerful  engine  goes,  com- 
paratively noiseless,  smooth-running,  not  obnox- 
ious to  sensitive  nostrils,  and  altogether  suitable 
for  high-road  traffic,  the  problem  will  very  speedily 
be  solved.  And  upon  that  assumption,  in  what 
direction  are  these  new  motor  vehicles  likely  to 
develop?  how  will  they  react  upon  the  railways? 
and  where,  finally,  will  they  take  us? 

At  present  they  seem  to  promise  developments 
upon  three  distinct  and  definite  lines. 

There  will,  first  of  all,  be  the  motor  truck  for 
heavy  traffic.     Already  such  trucks  are  in  evidence 

and  still  higher  explosives  for  use  in  war,  the  neglect  of  the  me- 
chanical application  of  this  class  of  substance  being  largely 
due  to  the  fact  that  chemists  are  not  as  a  rule  engineers,  nor 
engineers  chemists.  But  an  easily  portable  substance,  the 
decomposition  of  which  would  evolve  energy,  or — what  is,  from 
the  practical  point  of  view,  much  the  same  thing — an  easily 
portable  substance  which  could  be  decomposed  electrically  by 
wind  or  water  power,  and  which  would  then  recombine  and 
supply  force,  either  in  intermittent  thrusts  at  a  piston  or  as  an 
electric  current,  would  be  infinitely  more  convenient  for  all  locomo- 
tive purposes  than  the  cumbersome  bunkers  and  boilers  required 
by  steam.  The  presumption  is  altogether  in  favor  of  the  pos- 
sibility of  such  substances.  Their  advent  will  be  the  begin- 
ning of  the  end  for  steam  traction  on  land  and  of  the  steamship 
at  sea — the  end  indeed  of  the  Age  of  Coal  and  Steam.  And  even 
with  regard  to  steam,  there  may  be  a  curious  change  of  method 
before  the  end.  It  is  beginning  to  appear  that,  after  all,  the 
piston  and  cylinder  type  of  engine  is,  for  locomotive  purposes 
— on  water  at  least,  if  not  on  land — by  no  means  the  most  perfect. 
Another,  and  fundamentally  different  type,  the  turbine  type, 
in  which  the  impulse  of  the  steam  spins  a  wheel  instead  of  shov- 
ing a  piston,  would  appear  to  be  altogether  better  than  the  adapted 
pumpiiig-engine — at  any  rate,  for  the  purposes  of  steam  naviga- 

i6 


LOCOMOTION    IN    THE    TWENTIETH    CENTURY 

distributing  goods  and  parcels  of  various  sorts. 
And  sooner  or  later,  no  doubt,  the  numerous  ad- 
vantages of  such  an  arrangement  will  lead  to  the 
organization  of  large  carrier  companies,  using 
such  motor  trucks  to  carry  goods  in  bulk  or  parcels 
on  the  high-roads.  Such  companies  will  be  in  an 
exceptionally  favorable  position  to  organize  storage 
and  repair  for  the  motors  of  the  general  public 
on  profitable  terms,  and  possibly  to  co-operate  in 
various  ways  with  the  manufacturers  of  special 
tjT^es  of  motor  machines. 

In  the  next  place,  and  parallel  with  the  motor 
truck,  there  will  develop  the  hired  or  privately 

tion.  Hero,  of  Alexandria,  describes  an  elementary  form  of 
such  an  engine,  and  the  early  experimenters  of  the  seventeenth 
century  tried  and  abandoned  the  rotary  principle.  It  was  not 
adapted  to  pumping,  and  pumping  was  the  only  application 
that  then  offered  sufficient  immediate  encouragement  to  persist- 
ence. The  thing  marked  time  for  quite  two  centuries  and  a 
half,  therefore,  while  the  piston  engines  perfected  themselves ; 
and  only  in  the  eighties  did  the  requirements  of  the  dynamo- 
electric  machine  open  a  "  practicable  "  way  of  advance.  The 
motors  of  the  dynamo-electric  machine  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, in  fact,  played  exactly  the  rdle  of  the  pumping- engine 
in  the  eighteenth,  and  by  1894  so  many  difficulties  of  detail  had 
been  settled  that  a  syndicate  of  capitalists  and  scientific  men 
could  face  the  construction  of  an  experimental  ship.  This 
ship,  the  Turbinia,  after  a  considerable  amount  of  trial  and 
modification,  attained  the  unprecedented  speed  of  34  J4  knots  an 
hour,  and  her  Majesty's  navy  has  possessed,  in  the  Turbinia' s 
younger  and  greater  sister,  the  Viper,  now  unhappily  lost,  a 
torpedo-destroyer  capable  of  forty-one  miles  an  hour.  There  can 
be  little  doubt  that  the  sea  speeds  of  fifty  and  even  sixty  miles 
an  hour  will  be  attained  within  the  next  few  years.  But  I  do 
not  think  that  these  developments  will  do  more  than  delay  the 
advent  of  the  "  explosive  "  or  "  storage  of  force  "  engine. 

17 


ANTICIPATIONS 

owned  motor  carriage.  This,  for  all  except  the 
longest  journeys,  will  add  a  fine  sense  of  personal 
independence  to  all  the  small  conveniences  of  first- 
class  railway  travel.  It  will  be  capable  of  a  day's 
journey  of  three  hundred  miles  or  more,  long  be- 
fore the  developments  to  be  presently  foreshadowed 
arrive.  One  will  change  nothing — unless  it  is  the 
driver — from  stage  to  stage.  One  will  be  free  to 
dine  where  one  chooses,  hurry  when  one  chooses, 
travel  asleep  or  awake,  stop  and  pick  flowers,  turn 
over  in  bed  of  a  morning  and  tell  the  carriage  to  , 
wait — unless,  which  is  highly  probable,  one  sleeps 
aboard.* 

And,  thirdly,  there  will  be  the  motor  omnibus, 
attacking  or  developing  out  of  the  horse  omnibus 
companies  and  the  suburban  lines.  All  this  seems 
fairly  safe  prophesying. 

And  these  things,   which  are  quite  obviously 

•  The  historian  of  the  future,  writing  about  the  nineteenth 
century,  will,  I  sometimes  fancy,  find  a  new  meaning  in  a  familiar 
phrase.  It  is  the  custom  to  call  this  the  most  "  Democratic  " 
age  the  world  has  ever  seen,  and  most  of  us  are  beguiled  by  the 
etymological  contrast,  and  the  memory  of  certain  legislative 
revolutions,  to  oppose  one  form  of  stupidity  prevailing  to  an- 
other, and  to  fancy  we  mean  the  opposite  to  an  "  Aristocratic  " 
period.  But,  indeed,  we  do  not.  So  far  as  that  political  point 
goes,  the  Chinaman  has  always  been  infinitely  more  democratic 
than  the  European.  But  the  world,  by  a  series  of  gradations 
into  error,  has  come  to  use  "  Democratic  "  as  a  substitute  for 
"  Wholesale,"  and  as  an  opposite  to  "  Individual,"  without 
realizing  the  shifted  application  at  all.  Thereby  old  "  Aris- 
tocracy," the  organization  of  society  for  the  glory  and  preserva- 
tion of  the  Select  Dull,  gets  to  a  flavor  even  of  freedom.  When 
the  historian  of  the  future  speaks  of  the  past  century  as  a  Demo- 

i8 


LOCOMOTION    IN    THE   TWENTIETH   CENTURY 

coming  even  now,  will  be  working  out  their  many 
structural  problems  when  the  next  phase  in  their 
development  begins.  The  motor  omnibus  com- 
panies competing  against  the  suburban  railways 
will  find  themselves  hampered  in  the  speed  of  their 
longer  runs  by  the  slower  horse  traffic  on  their 
routes,  and  they  will  attempt  to  secure,  and,  it 
may  be,  after  tough  legislative  struggles,  will 
secure  the  power  to  form  private  roads  of  a  new 
sort,  upon  which  their  vehicles  will  be  free  to  travel 
up  to  the  limit  of  their  very  highest  possible  speed. 
It  is  along  the  line  of  such  private  tracks  and  roads 
that  the  forces  of  change  will  certainly  tend  to 
travel,  and  along  which  I  am  absolutely  convinced 
thej"  will  travel.  This  segregation  of  motor  traffic 
is  probably  a  matter  that  may  begin  even  in  the 
present  decade. 

Once  this  process  of  segregation  from  the  high- 
road of  the  horse  and  pedestrian  sets  in,  it  will 

cratic  century,  he  will  have  in  mind,  more  than  anything  else, 
the  unprecedented  fact  that  we  seemed  to  do  everything  in  heaps 
— we  read  in  epidemics ;  clothed  ourselves,  all  over  the  world,  in 
identical  fashions ;  built  and  furnished  our  houses  in  stereo 
designs ;  and  travelled — that  naturally  most  individual  pro- 
ceeding— in  bales.  To  make  the  railway  train  a  perfect  sym- 
bol of  our  times,  it  should  be  presented  as  uncomfortably  full 
in  the  third  class — a  few  passengers  standing — and  everybody 
reading  the  current  number  either  of  the  Daily  Mail,  Pearson's 
Weekly,  Answers,  Tit  Bits,  or  whatever  greatest  novel  of  the 
century  happened  to  be  going.  .  .  .  But,  as  I  hope  to  make 
clearer  in  my  later  papers,  this  "  Democracy,"  or  Wholesale 
method  of  living,  like  the  railways,  is  transient — a  first  make- 
shift development  of  great  and  finally  (to  me  at  least)  quite  hope- 
ful social  reorganization. 

19 


ANTICIPATIONS 

probably  go  on  rapidly.  It  may  spread  out  from 
short  omnibus  routes,  much  as  the  London  Met- 
ropolitan Railway  system  has  spread.  The  motor 
carrier  companies  competing  in  speed  of  delivery 
with  the  quickened  railways  will  conceivably  co- 
operate with  the  long-distance  omnibus  and  the 
hired-carriage  companies  in  the  formation  of  trunk 
lines.  Almost  insensibly,  certain  highly  profitable 
longer  routes  will  be  joined  up — the  London  to 
Brighton,  for  example,  in  England.  And  the 
quiet  English  citizen  will,  no  doubt,  while  these 
things  are  still  quite  exceptional  and  experimental 
in  his  lagging  land,  read  one  day  with  surprise  in 
the  violently  illustrated  popular  magazines  of 
1910  that  there  are  now  so  many  thousand  miles 
of  these  roads  already  established  in  America  and 
Germany  and  elsewhere.  And  thereupon,  after 
some  patriotic  meditations,  he  may  pull  himself 
together. 

We  may  even  hazard  some  details  about  these 
special  roads.  For  example,  they  w411  be  very 
different  from  macadamized  roads;  they  will  be 
used  only  by  soft-tired  conveyances ;  the  battering 
horse-shoes,  the  perpetual  filth  of  horse  traffic, 
and  the  clumsy  wheels  of  laden  carts  will  never 
wear  them.  It  may  be  that  they  will  have  a  surface 
like  that  of  some  cycle-racing  tracks,  though  since 
they  will  be  open  to  wind  and  weather,  it  is  perhaps 
more  probable  they  will  be  made  of  very  good 
asphalt  sloped  to  drain,  and  still  more  probable 

20 


LOCOMOTION    IN    THE    TWENTIETH   CENTURY 

that  they  will  be  of  some  quite  new  substance  al- 
together—whether hard  or  resilient  is  beyond  my 
foretelling.  They  will  have  to  be  very  wide — they 
will  be  just  as  wide  as  the  courage  of  their  pro- 
moters goes — and  if  the  first  made  are  too  narrow, 
there  will  be  no  question  of  gauge  to  limit  the  later 
ones.  Their  traiBfic  in  opposite  directions  will 
probably  be  strictly  separated,  and  it  will  no  doubt 
habitually  disregard  complicated  and  fussy  reg- 
ulations imposed  under  the  initiative  of  the  rail- 
way interest  by  such  official  bodies  as  the  Board 
of  Trade.  The  promoters  will  doubtless  take  a 
hint  from  suburban  railway  traffic  and  from  the 
current  difficulty  of  the  Metropolitan  police,  and 
where  their  ways  branch  the  streams  of  traffic  will 
not  cross  at  a  level,  but  by  bridges.  It  is  easily 
conceivable  that  once  these  tracks  are  in  existence, 
cyclists  and  motors  other  than  those  of  the  con- 
structing companies  will  be  able  to  make  use  of 
them.  And,  moreover,  once  they  exist  it  will  be 
possible  to  experiment  with  vehicles  of  a  size  and 
power  quite  beyond  the  dimensions  prescribed  by 
our  ordinary  roads — roads  whose  width  has  been 
entirely  determined  by  the  size  of  a  cart  a  horse 
can  pull.* 

Countless  modifying  influences  will,  of  course, 
come  into  operation.  For  example,  it  has  been 
assumed,    perhaps   rashly,    that   the   railway   in- 

*  So  we  begin  to  see  the  possibility  of  laying  that  phantom 
horse  that  haunts  the  railways  to  this  day  so  disastrously. 

21 


ANTICIPATIONS 

fluence  will  certainly  remain  jealous  and  hostile 
to  these  growths:  that  what  may  be  called  the 
"Bicycle  Ticket  Policy"  will  be  pursued  through- 
out. Assuredly  there  will  be  fights  of  a  very  compli- 
cated sort  at  first,  but  once  one  of  these  specialized 
lines  is  in  operation,  it  may  be  that  some  at  least 
of  the  railway  companies  will  hasten  to  replace 
their  flanged  rolling  stock  by  carriages  with  rubber 
tires,  remove  their  rails,  broaden  their  cuttings 
and  embankments,  raise  their  bridges,  and  take 
to  the  new  ways  of  traffic.  Or  they  may  find  it 
answer  to  cut  fares,  widen  their  gauges,  reduce 
their  gradients,  modify  their  points  and  curves, 
and  woo  the  passenger  back  with  carriages  beauti- 
fully hung  and  sumptuously  furnished,  and  all 
the  convenience  and  luxury  of  a  club.  Few  people 
would  mind  being  an  hour  or  so  longer  going  to 
Paris  from  London,  if  the  railway  travelling  was 
neither  rackety,  cramped,  nor  tedious.  One  could 
be  patient  enough  if  one  was  neither  being  jarred, 
deafened,  cut  into  slices  by  draughts,  and  con- 
tinually more  densely  caked  in  a  filthy  dust  of 
coal;  if  one  could  write  smoothly  and  easily  at  a 
steady  table,  read  papers,  have  one's  hair  cut, 
and  dine  in  comfort* — none  of  which  things  are 

*  A  correspondent,  Mr.  Rudolf  Cyrian,  writes  to  correct  me 
here,  and  I  cannot  do  better,  I  think,  than  thank  him  and  quote 
what  he  says.  "  It  is  hardly  right  to  state  that  fifty  miles  an 
hour  '  is  the  limit  of  our  speed  for  land  travel,  so  far  as  existing 
conditions  go.'  As  far  as  English  traffic  is  concerned,  the  state- 
ment is  approximately   correct.     In   the  United   States,   how- 

22 


LOCOMOTION    IN    THE    TWENTIETH    CENTURY 

possible  at  present,  and  none  of  which  require 
any  new  inventions,  any  revolutionary  contri- 
vances, or  indeed  anything  but  an  intelligent  ap- 
plication of  existing  resources  and  known  princi- 
ples. Our  rage  for  fast  trains,  so  far  as  long-dis- 
tance travel  is  concerned,  is  largely  a  passion  to 
end  the  extreme  discomfort  involved.  It  is  in  the 
daily  journey  on  the  suburban  train,  that  daily 
tax  of  time,  that  speed  is  in  itself  so  eminentl}^ 
desirable,  and  it  is  just  here  that  the  conditions  of 
railway  travel  most  hopelessly  fail.  It  must 
always  be  remembered  that  the  railway  train, 
as  against  the  motor,  has  the  advantage  that  its 
wholesale  traction  reduces  the  prime  cost  by  de- 

ever,  there  are  several  trains  running  now  which  average  over 
considerable  distances  more  than  sixty  miles  an  hour,  stoppages 
included,  nor  is  there  much  reason  why  this  should  not  be  con- 
siderably increased.  What  especially  hampers  the  develop- 
ment of  railways  in  England — as  compared  with  other  countries 
— is  the  fact  that  the  rolling-stock  templet  is  too  small.  Hence 
carriages  in  England  have  to  be  narrower  and  lower  than  car- 
riages in  the  United  States,  although  both  run  on  the  same 
standard  gauge  (4  feet  8/^  inches).  The  result  is  that  several 
things  which  you  describe  as  not  possible  at  present,  such  as, 
'  write  smoothly  and  easily  at  a  steady  table,  read  papers,  have 
one's  hair  cut,  and  dine  in  comfort,'  are  not  only  feasible,  but 
actually  attained  on  some  of  the  good  American  trains.  For 
instance,  on  the  present  Empire  State  Express,  running  between 
New  York  and  Buffalo,  or  on  the  present  Pennsylvania  Limited, 
running  between  New  York  and  Chicago,  and  on  others ;  with 
the  Pennsylvania  Limited  travel,  stenographers  and  typewriters, 
whose  services  are  placed  at  the  disposal  of  passengers  free  of 
charge.  But  the  train  on  which  there  is  the  least  vibration  of 
any  is  probably  the  new  Empire  State  Express,  and  on  this  it 
is  certainly  possible  to  write  smoothly  and  easily  at  a  steady 
table." 

23 


ANTICIPATIONS 

manding  only  one  engine  for  a  great  number 
of  coaches.  This  will  not  serve  the  first-class 
long  -  distance  passenger,  but  it  -may  the  third. 
Against  that  economy  one  must  balance  the  neces- 
sary delay  of  a  relatively  infrequent  service,  which 
latter  item  becomes  relatively  greater  and  greater 
in  proportion  to  the  former  the  briefer  the  journey 
to  be  made. 

And  it  may  be  that  many  railways,  which  are 
neither  capable  of  modification  into  subiurban 
motor  tracks,  nor  of  development  into  luxurious 
through  routes,  will  find,  in  spite  of  the  loss  of 
many  elements  of  their  old  activity,  that  there 
is  still  a  profit  to  be  made  from  a  certain  section 
of  the  heavy -goods  traffic  and  from  cheap  ex- 
cursions. These  are  forms  of  work  for  which  rail- 
ways seem  to  be  particularly  adapted,  and  which 
the  diversion  of  a  great  portion  of  their  passenger 
traffic  would  enable  them  to  conduct  even  more 
efficiently.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine,  for  example, 
how  any  sort  of  road-car  organization  could  beat 
the  railways  at  the  business  of  distributing  coal 
and  timber  and  similar  goods,  which  are  taken 
in  bulk  directly  from  the  pit  or  wharf  to  local  cen- 
tres of  distribution. 

It  must  always  be  remembered  that  at  the  worst 
the  defeat  of  such  a  great  organization  as  the 
railway  system  does  not  involve  its  disappearance 
until  a  long  period  has  elapsed.  It  means  at  first 
no  more  than  a  period  of  modification  and  dif- 

24 


LOCOMOTION    IN    THE   TWENTIETH    CENTURY 

ferentiation.  Before  extinction  can  happen  a 
certain  amount  of  wealth  in  railway  property 
must  absolutely  disappear.  Though  under  the 
stress  of  successful  competition  the  capital  value 
of  the  railways  may  conceivably  fall,  and  continue 
to  fall,  towards  the  marine-store  prices,  fares  and 
freights  pursue  the  sweated  working  expenses 
to  the  vanishing  point,  and  the  land  occupied  sink 
to  the  level  of  not  very  eligible  building  sites; 
yet  the  railways  will,  nevertheless,  continue  in 
operation  until  these  downward  limits  are  posi- 
tively attained. 

An  imagination  prone  to  the  picturesque  insists 
at  this  stage  upon  a  vision  of  the  latter  days  of  one 
of  the  less  happily  situated  lines.  Along  a  weedy 
embankment  there  pants  and  clangs  a  patched 
and  tarnished  engine,  its  paint  blistered,  its  parts 
leprously  dull.  It  is  driven  by  an  aged  and  sweat- 
ed driver,  and  the  burning  garbage  of  its  furnace 
distils  a  choking  reek  into  the  air.  A  huge  train 
of  urban  dust  trucks  bangs  and  clatters  behind 
it,  en  route  to  that  sequestered  dumping-ground 
where  rubbish  is  burned  to  some  industrial  end. 
But  that  is  a  lapse  into  the  merely  just  possible, 
and  at  most  a  local  tragedy.  Almost  certainly 
the  existing  lines  of  railway  will  develop  and  dif- 
ferentiate, some  in  one  direction  and  some  in  an- 
other, according  to  the  nature  of  the  pressure 
upon  them.  Almost  all  will  probably  be  still  in 
existence  and   in  divers  ways  busy,  spite  of  the 

25 


ANTICIPATIONS 

swarming  new  highways  I  have  ventured  to  fore- 
shadow a  hundred  years  from  now. 

In  fact,  we  have  to  contemplate,  not  so  much  a 
supersession  of  the  railways  as  a  modification 
and  specialization  of  them  in  various  directions, 
and  the  enormous  development  beside  them  of 
competing  and  supplementary  methods.  And  step 
by  step  with  these  developments  will  come  a  very 
considerable  acceleration  of  the  ferry  traffic  of 
the  narrow  seas  through  such  improvements  as 
the  introduction  of  turbine  engines.  So  far  as 
the  high-road  and  the  longer  journeys  go  this  is 
the  extent  of  our  prophecy.* 

But  in  the  discussion  of  all  quest  ons  of  land 
locomotion  one  must  come  at  last  to  the  knots  of 
the  network,  to  the  central  portions  of  the  towns, 
the  dense,  vast  towns  of  our  time,  with  their  high 
ground  values  and  their  narrow,  already  almost 
impassable  streets.  I  hope  at  a  later  stage  to  give 
some  reasons  for  anticipating  that  the  centripetal 
pressure  of  the  congested  towns  of  our  epoch  may 
ultimately  be  very  greatly  relieved,  but  for  the 
next  few  decades  at  least  the  usage  of  existing 
conditions  will  prevail,  and  in  every  town  there 

*  Since  this  appeared  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  1  have  had 
the  pleasure  of  reading  Twentieth  -  century  Inventions,  by  Mr. 
George  Sutherland,  and  I  find  very  much  else  of  interest 
bearing  on  these  questions,  the  happy  suggestion  for  the  ferry 
transits,  at  any  rate,  of  a  rail  along  the  sea  bottom,  out  of  reach 
of  all  that  superficial  "  motion  "  that  is  so  distressing  and  of 
all  possibilities  of  collisions,  which  would  serve  as  a  guide  to 
swift  submarine  vessels. 

26 


LOCOMOTION    IN    THE    TWENTIETH   CENTURY 

is  a  certain  nucleus  of  offices,  hotels,  and  shops 
upon  which  the  centrifugal  forces  I  anticipate 
will  certainly  not  operate.  At  present  the  streets 
of  many  larger  towns,  and  especially  of  such  old- 
established  towns  as  London,  whose  central  por- 
tions have  the  narrowest  arteries,  present  a  quite 
unprecedented  state  of  congestion.  When  the 
Green  of  some  future  History  of  the  English  People 
comes  to  review  our  times,  he  will,  from  his  stand- 
point of  comfort  and  convenience,  find  the  present 
streets  of  London  quite  or  even  more  incredibly 
unpleasant  than  are  the  filthy  kennels,  the  mud- 
holes,  and  darkness  of  the  streets  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  to  our  enlightened  minds.  He  will 
echo  our  question,  "Why  did  people  stand  it?" 
He  will  be  struck  first  of  all  by  the  omnipresence 
of  mud,  filthy  mud,  churned  up  by  hoofs  and  wheels 
under  the  inclement  skies,  and  perpetually  defiled 
and  added  to  by  innumerable  horses.  Imagine 
his  description  of  a  young  lady  crossing  the  road 
at  the  Marble  Arch,  in  London,  on  a  wet  Novem- 
ber afternoon,  "  breathless,  foul-footed,  splashed  by 
a  passing  hansom  from  head  to  foot,  happy  that 
she  has  reached  the  further  pavement  alive  at 
the  mere  cost  of  her  ruined  clothes."  .  .  . 
"Just  where  the  bicycle  might  have  served  its 
most  useful  purpose,"  he  will  write,  "in  affording 
a  healthy  daily  ride  to  the  innumerable  clerks 
and  such-like  sedentary  toilers  of  the  central  region 
it  was  rendered  impossible  by  the  danger  of  side- 

27 


ANTICIPATIONS 
f 

slip  in  this  vast  ferocious  traffic."  And,  indeed, 
to  my  mind  at  least,  this  last  is  the  crowning  ab- 
surdity of  the  present  state  of -affairs,  that  the 
clerk  and  the  shop  hand,  classes  of  people  posi- 
tively starved  of  exercise,  should  be  obliged  to 
spend  yearly  the  price  of  a  bicycle  upon  a  season- 
ticket,  because  of  the  quite  unendurable  incon- 
venience and  danger  of  urban  cycling. 

Now,  in  what  direction  will  matters  move?  The 
first  and  most  obvious  thing  to  do,  the  thing  that 
in  many  cases  is  being  attempted,  and  in  a  futile, 
insufficient  way  getting  itself  done,  the  thing 
that  I  do  not  for  one  moment  regard  as  the  final 
remedy,  is  the  remedy  of  the  architect  and  builder 
— profitable  enough  to  them  anyhow — to  widen 
the  streets  and  to  cut  "new  arteries,"  Now, 
every  new  artery  means  a  series  of  new  whirl- 
pools of  traffic,  such  as  the  pensive  Londoner  may 
study  for  himself  at  the  intersection  of  Shaftesbury 
Avenue  with  Oxford  Street,  and  unless  colossal 
— or  inconveniently  steep — crossing -bridges  are 
made,  the  wider  the  affluent  arteries  the  more 
terrible  the  battle  of  the  traffic.  Imagine  Regent 
Circus  on  the  scale  of  the  Place  de  la  Concorde. 
And  there  is  the  value  of  the  ground  to  consider; 
with  every  increment  of  width  the  value  of  the 
dwindling  remainder  in  the  meshes  of  the  network 
of  roads  will  rise,  until  to  pave  the  widened  streets 
with  gold  will  be  a  mere  trifling  addition  to  the 
cost  of  their  "improvement." 

2S 


LOCOMOTION    IN    THE    TWENTIETH    CENTURY 

There  is,  however,  quite  another  direction  in 
which  the  congestion  may  find  reUef,  and  that 
is  in  the  "regulation''  of  the  traffic.  This  has 
already  begun  in  London  in  an  attack  on  the 
crawling  cab  and  in  the  new  by-laws  of  the  Lon- 
don County  Council,  whereby  certain  specified 
forms  of  heavy  traffic  are  prohibited  the  use  of 
the  streets  between  ten  and  seven.  These  things 
may  be  the  first  beginning  of  a  process  of  restric- 
tion that  may  go  far.  Many  people  living  at 
the  present  time,  who  have  grown  up  amid  the 
exceptional  and  possibly  very  transient  charac- 
teristics of  this  time,  will  be  disposed  to  regard 
the  traffic  in  the  streets  of  our  great  cities  as  a 
part  of  the  natural  order  of  things,  and  as  un- 
avoidable as  the  throng  upon  the  pavement.  But, 
indeed,  the  presence  of  all  the  chief  constituents 
of  this  vehicular  torrent — the  cabs  and  hansoms, 
the  vans,  the  omnibuses — everything,  indeed, 
except  the  few  private  carriages — are  as  novel, 
as  distinctively  things  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
as  the  railway  train  and  the  needle  telegraph. 
The  streets  of  the  great  towns  of  antiquity,  the 
streets  of  the  great  towns  of  the  East,  the  streets 
of  all  the  mediaeval  towns,  were  not  intended  for 
any  sort  of  wheeled  traffic  at  all — were  designed 
primarily  and  chiefly  for  pedestrians.  So  it  would 
be,  I  suppose,  in  any  one's  ideal  city.  Surely 
town,  in  theory  at  least,  is  a  place  one  walks 
about  as  one  walks  about  a  house  and  garden, 

29 


ANTICIPATIONS 

dressed  with  a  certain  ceremonious  elaboration, 
safe  from  mud  and  the  hardship  and  defilement 
of  foul  weather,  buying,  meeting,  dining,  study- 
ing, carousing,  seeing  the  play.  It  is  the  growth 
in  size  of  the  city  that  has  necessitated  the  growth 
of  this  coarser  traffic  that  has  made  "  Town "  at 
last  so  utterly  detestable. 

But  if  one  reflects,  it  becomes  clear  that,  save 
for  the  vans  of  goods,  this  moving  tide  of  wheeled 
masses  is  still  essentiall}'^  a  stream  of  urban  pedes- 
trians, pedestrians  who,  by  reason  of  the  dis- 
tances they  have  to  go,  have  had  to  jump  on  'buses 
and  take  cabs — in  a  word,  to  bring  in  the  high 
road  to  their  aid.  And  the  vehicular  traffic  of 
the  street  is  essentially  the  high-road  traffic  very 
roughly  adapted  to  the  new  needs.  The  cab  is  a 
simple  development  of  the  carriage,  the  omnibus 
of  the  coach,  and  the  supplementary  traffic  of 
the  underground  and  electric  railways  is  a  by 
no  means  brilliantly  imagined  adaptation  of  the 
long  route  railway.  These  are  all  still  new  things, 
experimental  to  the  highest  degree,  changing 
and  bound  to  change  much  more,  in  the  period  of 
specialization  that  is  now  beginning. 

Now,  the  first  most  probable  development  is  a 
change  in  the  omnibus  and  the  omnibus  railway. 
A  point  quite  as  important  with  these  means  of 
transit  as  actual  speed  of  movement  is  frequency: 
time  is  wasted  abundantly  and  most  vexatiously 
at  present  in  waiting  and  in  accommodating  one's 

30 


LOCOMOTION    IN    THE    TWENTIETH   CENTURY 

arrangements  to  infrequent  times  of  call  and  de- 
parture. The  more  jrequent  a  local  service,  the 
more  it  comes  to  he  relied  upon.  Another  point — 
and  one  in  which  the  omnibus  has  a  great  ad- 
vantage over  the  railway — is  that  it  should  be 
possible  to  get  on  and  off  at  any  point,  or  at  as 
many  points  on  the  route  as  possible.  But  this 
means  a  high  proportion  of  stoppages,  and  this  is 
destructive  to  speed.  There  is,  however,  one 
conceivable  means  of  transit  that  is  not  simply 
frequent  but  continuous,  that  may  be  joined  or 
left  at  any  point  without  a  stoppage,  that  could 
be  adapted  to  many  existing  streets  at  the  level 
or  quite  easily  sunken  in  tunnels,  or  elevated 
above  the  street  level,*  and  that  means  of  transit 
is  the  moving  platform,  whose  possibilities  have 
been  exhibited  to  all  the  world  in  a  sort  of  mean 
caricature  at  the  Paris  Exhibition.  Let  us  imag- 
ine the  inner  circle  of  the  district  railway  adapted 
to  this  conception.  I  will  presume  that  the  Parisian 
"rolling  platform"  is  familiar  to  the  reader.  The 
District  Railway  tunnel  is,  I  imagine,  about  twenty- 
four  feet  wide.  If  we  suppose  the  space  given 
to  six  platforms  of  three  feet  wide,  and  one  (the 
most  rapid)  of  six  feet,  and  if  we  suppose  each 
platform  to  be  going  four  miles  an  hour  faster 
than  its  slower  fellow  (a  velocity  the  Paris  ex- 

*  To  the  level  of  such  upper-story  pavements  as  Sir  F.  Bram- 
well  has  proposed  for  the  new  Holborn  to  Strand  Street,  for  ex- 
ample. 

31 


ANTICIPATIONS 

periment  has  shown  to  be  perfectly  comfortable 
and  safe),  we  should  have  the  upper  platform 
running  round  the  circle  at  a  pace  of  twenty-eight 
miles  an  hour.  If,  further,  we  adopt  an  ingenious 
suggestion  of  Professor  Perry's  and  imagine  the 
descent  to  the  line  made  down  a  very  slowly 
rotating  staircase  at  the  centre  of  a  big  rotating, 
wheel-shaped  platform,  against  a  portion  of  whose 
rim  the  slowest  platform  runs  in  a  curve,  one  could 
verj'^  easily  add  a  speed  of  six  or  eight  miles  an 
hour  more,  and  to  that  the  man  in  a  hurry  would 
be  able  to  add  his  own  four  miles  an  hour  by  walk- 
ing in  the  direction  of  motion.  If  the  reader  is  a 
traveller,  and  if  he  will  imagine  that  black  and 
sulphurous  tunnel,  swept  and  garnished,  lit  and 
sweet,  with  a  train  much  faster  than  the  existing 
underground  trains  perpetually  ready  to  go  off 
with  him  and  never  crowded — if  he  will  further 
imagine  this  train  a  platform  set  with  comfortable 
seats  and  neat  bookstalls  and  so  forth,  he  will 
get  an  inkling  in  just  one  detail  of  what  he  per- 
haps misses  by  living  now  instead  of  thirty  or 
forty  years  ahead. 

I  have  supposed  the  replacement  to  occur  in  the 
case  of  the  London  Inner  Circle  Railway,  because 
there  the  necessary  tunnel  already  exists  to  help 
the  imagination  of  the  English  reader,  but  that  the 
specific  replacement  will  occur  is  rendered  improb- 
able by  the  fact  that  the  circle  is  for  much  of 
its  circumference   entangled  with  other  lines  of 

32 


LOCOMOTION    IN    THE    TWENTIETH    CENTURY 

communication — the  North- Western  Railway,  for 
example.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  as  the  American 
reader  at  least  will  promptly  see,  the  much  more 
practicable  thing  is  that  upper  footpath,  with 
these  moving  platforms  beside  it,  running  out 
over  the  street  after  the  manner  of  the  viaduct 
of  an  elevated  railroad.  But  in  some  cases,  at 
any  rate,  the  demonstrated  cheapness  and  prac- 
ticability of  tunnels  at  a  considerable  depth  will 
come  into  play. 

Will  this  diversion  of  the  vast  omnibus  traffic 
of  to-day  into  the  air  and  underground,  together 
with  the  segregation  of  van  traffic  to  specific  routes 
and  times,  be  the  only  change  in  the  streets  of 
the  new  century?  It  may  be  a  shock,  perhaps, 
to  some  minds,  but  I  must  confess  I  do  not  see 
what  is  to  prevent  the  process  of  elimination  that 
is  beginning  now  with  the  heavy  vans  spreading 
until  it  covers  all  horse  traffic,  and  with  the  dis- 
appearance of  horse  hoofs  and  the  necessary  filth 
of  horses,  the  road  surface  may  be  made  a  very 
different  thing  from  what  it  is  at  present,  better 
drained  and  admirably  adapted  for  the  soft-tired 
hackney  vehicles  and  the  torrent  of  cyclists.  More- 
over, there  will  be  little  to  prevent  a  widening  of 
the  existing  sidewalks,  and  the  protection  of  the 
passengers  from  rain  and  hot  sun  by  awnings, 
or  such  arcades  as  distinguish  Turin,  or  Sir  F. 
Bramwell's  upper  footpaths  on  the  model  of  the 
Chester  rows.  Moreover,  there  is  no  reason  but 
3  33 


ANTICIPATIONS 

the  existing  filth  why  the  roadways  should  not 
have  translucent  velaria  to  pull  over  in  bright 
sunshine  and  wet  weather.  It  -would  probably 
need  less  labor  to  manipulate  such  contrivances 
than  is  required  at  present  for  the  constant  con- 
flict with  slush  and  dust.  Now,  of  course,  we 
tolerate  the  rain,  because  it  facilitates  a  sort  of 
cleaning  process. 

Enough  of  this  present  speculation.  I  have 
indicated  now  the  general  lines  of  the  roads  and 
streets  and  ways  and  underways  of  the  twentieth 
century.  But  at  present  they  stand  vacant  in  our 
prophecy,  not  only  awaiting  the  human  interests 
— the  characters  and  occupations,  and  clothing 
of  the  throng  of  our  children  and  our  children's 
children  that  flows  along  them,  but  also  the  decora- 
tions our  children's  children's  taste  will  dictate, 
the  advertisements  their  eyes  will  tolerate,  the 
shops  in  which  they  will  buy.  To  all  that  we 
shall  finally  come,  and  even  in  the  next  chapter  I 
hope  it  will  be  made  more  evident  how  convenient- 
ly these  later  and  more  intimate  matters  follow, 
instead  of  preceding,  these  present  mechanical 
considerations.  And  of  the  beliefs  and  hopes, 
the  thought  and  language,  the  further  pros- 
pects of  this  multitude  as  yet  unborn — of  these 
things  also  we  shall  make  at  last  certain 
hazardous  guesses.  But  at  first  I  would  submit 
to  those  who  may  find  the  "machinery  in  mo- 
tion"   excessive   in    this  chapter,  we  must  have 

34 


LOCOMOTION    IN    THE    TWENTIETH  CENTXJRY 

the  background  and  fittings  —  the  scene    before 
the  play.* 

•  I  have  said  nothing  in  this  chapter,  devoted  to  locomotion, 
of  the  coming  invention  of  flying.  This  is  from  no  disbelief  in 
its  final  practicability,  nor  from  any  disregard  of  the  new  in- 
fluences it  will  bring  to  bear  upon  mankind.  But  I  do  not  think 
it  at  all  probable  that  aeronautics  will  ever  come  into  play  as 
a  serious  modification  of  transport  and  communication — the 
main  question  here  under  consideration.  Man  is  not,  for  ex- 
ample, an  albatross,  but  a  land  biped,  with  a  considerable  dis- 
position towards  being  made  sick  and  giddy  by  unusual  motions, 
and  however  he  soars  he  must  come  to  earth  to  live.  We  must 
build  our  picture  of  the  future  from  the  ground  upward ;  of  flying 
— ^in  its  place. 


THE  PROBABLE   DIFFUSION   OF 
GREAT   CITIES 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF 
GREAT   CITIES 


NOW,  the  velocity  at  which  a  man  and  his  be- 
longings may  pass  about  the  earth  is  in  itself 
a  very  trivial  matter  indeed,  but  it  involves  certain 
other  matters  not  at  all  trivial — standing,  indeed,  in 
an  almost  fundamental  relation  to  human  society. 
It  will  be  the  business  of  this  chapter  to  discuss 
the  relation  between  the  social  order  and  the  avail- 
able means  of  transit,  and  to  attempt  to  deduce 
from  the  principles  elucidated  the  coming  phases 
in  that  extraordinary  expansion,  shifting  and  in- 
ternal redistribution  of  population  that  has  been 
so  conspicuous  during  the  last  hundred  years. 

Let  us  consider  the  broad  features  of  the  redis- 
tribution of  the  population  that  has  characterized 
the  nineteenth  century.  It  may  be  summarized 
as  an  unusual  growth  of  great  cities  and  a  slight 
tendency  to  depopulation  in  the  country.  The 
growth  of  the  great  cities  is  the  essential  phe- 
nomenon. These  aggregates  having  populations 
of  from  eight  hundred  thousand  upward  to  four 

39 


ANTICIPATIONS 

and  five  millions,  are  certainly,  so  far  as  the  world 
outside  the  limits  of  the  Chinese  empire  goes, 
entirely  an  unprecedented  thing-.  Never  before, 
outside  the  valleys  of  the  three  great  Chinese 
rivers,  has  any  city — with  the  exception  of  Rome, 
and  perhaps  (but  very  doubtfully)  of  Babylon 
— certainly  had  more  than  a  million  inhabitants, 
and  it  is  at  least  permissible  to  doubt  whether  the 
population  of  Rome,  in  spite  of  its  exacting  a 
tribute  of  sea-borne  food  from  the  whole  of  the 
Mediterranean  basin,  exceeded  a  million  for  any 
great  length  of  time.*  But  there  are  now  ten 
town  aggregates  having  a  population  of  over  a 
million,  nearly  twenty  that  bid  fair  to  reach  that 
limit  in  the  next  decade,  and  a  great  number  at 
or  approaching  a  quarter  of  a  million.  We  call 
these  towns  and  cities,  but,  indeed,  they  are  of  a 

*  It  is  true  that  many  scholars  estimate  a  high-water  mark 
for  the  Roman  population  in  excess  of  two  millions ;  and  one 
daring  authority,  by  throwing  out  suburbs  ad  libitum  into  the 
Campagna,  suburbs  of  which  no  trace  remains,  has  raised  the 
two  to  ten.  The  Colosseum  could,  no  doubt,  seat  over  80,000 
spectators ;  the  circuit  of  the  bench  frontage  of  the  Circus  Maxi- 
mus  was  very  nearly  a  mile  in  length,  and  the  Romans  of  Im- 
perial times  certainly  used  ten  times  as  much  water  as  the  modern 
Romans.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  habits  change,  and  Rome 
as  it  is  defined  by  lines  drawn  at  the  times  of  its  greatest  ascen- 
dency— the  city,  that  is,  enclosed  by  the  walLs  of  Aurelian  and 
including  all  the  regions  of  Augustus,  an  enclosure  from  which 
there  could  have  been  no  reason  for  e.xcluding  half  or  more  of 
its  population — could  have  scarcely  contained  a  million.  It 
would  have  packed  very  comfortably  within  the  circle  of  the 
Grand  Boulevards  of  Paris — the  Paris,  that  is,  of  Louis  XIV., 
with  a  population  of  560,000 ;  and  the  Rome  of  to-day,  were  the 
houses  that  spread  so  densely  over  the  once  vacant  Campus 

40 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

different  order  of  things  to  the  towns  and  cities 
of  the  eighteenth-century  world. 

Concurrently  with  the  aggregation  of  people 
about  this  new  sort  of  centre,  there  has  been,  it 
is  alleged,  a  depletion  of  the  country  villages  and 
small  townships.  But,  so  far  as  the  counting  of 
heads  goes,  this  depletion  is  not  nearly  so  marked 
as  the  growth  of  the  great  towns.  Relatively, 
however,  it  is  striking  enough. 

Now,  is  this  growth  of  large  towns  really,  as  one 
may  allege,  a  result  of  the  development  of  railways 
in  the  world,  or  is  it  simply  a  change  in  human 
circumstances  that  happens  to  have  arisen  at  the 
same  time?  It  needs  only  a  very  general  review  of 
the  conditions  of  the  distribution  of  population  to 
realize  that  the  former  is  probably  the  true  answer. 

It  will  be  convenient  to  make  the  issue  part  of  a 
more  general  proposition — namely,  that  the  general 
distribution  of  population  in  a  country  must  al- 
tvays  be  directly  dependent  on  transport  facilities. 
To  illustrate  this  point  roughly,  we  may  build  up 
an  imaginary  simple  community  by  considering 
its  needs.  Over  an  arable  country-side,  for  ex- 
ample, inhabited  by  a  people  who  had  attained  to 

Martius  distributed  in  the  now  deserted  spaces  in  the  south 
and  east,  and  the  Vatican  suburb  replaced  within  the  ancient 
walls,  would  quite  fill  the  ancient  limits,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
the  population  is  under  500,000.  But  these  are  incidental  doubts 
on  a  very  authoritative  opinion,  and,  whatever  their  value,  they 
do  not  greatly  affect  the  significance  of  these  new  great  cities, 
which  have  arisen  all  over  the  world,  as  if  by  the  operation  of  a 
natural  law,  as  the  railways  have  developed. 

41 


ANTICIPATIONS 

a  level  of  agricultural  civilization  in  which  war 
was  no  longer  constantly  imminent,  the  popula- 
tion would  be  diffused  primarily -by  families  and 
groups  in  farmsteads.  It  might,  if  it  were  a  very 
simple  population,  be  almost  all  so  distributed. 
But  even  the  simplest  agriculturists  find  a  certain 
convenience  in  trade.  Certedn  definite  points  would 
be  convenient  for  such  local  trade  and  intercourse 
as  the  people  found  desirable,  and  here  it  is  that 
there  would  arise  the  germ  of  a  town.  At  first 
it  might  be  no  more  than  an  appointed  meeting- 
place,  a  market  square,  but  an  inn  and  a  black- 
smith would  inevitably  follow,  an  altar,  perhaps, 
and,  if  these  people  had  writing,  even  some  sort 
of  school.  It  would  have  to  be  where  water  was 
found,  and  it  would  have  to  be  generally  con- 
venient of  access  to  its  attendant  farmers. 

Now,  if  this  meeting-place  was  more  than  a 
certain  distance  from  any  particular  farm,  it  would 
be  inconvenient  for  that  farmer  to  get  himself 
and  his  produce  there  and  back,  and  to  do  his 
business  in  a  comfortable  daylight.  He  would 
not  be  able  to  come,  and,  instead,  he  would  either 
have  to  go  to  some  other  nearer  centre  to  trade 
and  gossip  with  his  neighbors  or,  failing  this, 
not  go  at  all.  Evidently,  then,  there  would  be  a 
maximum  distance  between  such  places.  This 
distance  in  England,  where  traffic  has  been  mainly 
horse  traffic  for  many  centuries,  seems  to  have 
worked  out,   according  to  the  gradients  and  so 

42 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

forth,  at  from  eight  to  fifteen  miles,  and  at  such 
distances  do  we  find  the  country  towns,  while 
the  horseless  man,  the  serf,  and  the  laborer  and 
laboring  wench  have  marked  their  narrow  limits 
in  the  distribution  of  the  intervening  villages. 
If  by  chance  these  gathering-places  have  arisen 
at  points  much  closer  than  this  maximum,  they 
have  come  into  competition,  and  one  has  finally 
got  the  better  of  the  other,  so  that  in  England  the 
distribution  is  often  singularlj^  uniform.  Agri- 
cultural districts  have  their  towns  at  about  eight 
miles,  and  where  grazing  takes  the  place  of  the 
plough,  the  town  distances  increase  to  fifteen.* 
And  so  it  is,  entirely  as  a  multiple  of  horse-and-f  oot 
strides,  that  all  the  villages  and  towns  of  the  world's 
country-side  have  been  plotted  out.f 

A  third,  and  almost  final,  factor  determining 
town  distribution  in  a  world  without  railways 
wduld  be  the  seaport  and  the  navigable  river. 
Ports  would  grow  into  dimensions  dependent  on 
the    population    of    the    conveniently    accessible 

*  It  will  be  plain  that  such  towns  must  have  clearly  defined 
limits  of  population,  dependent  finally  on  the  minimum  yearly  pro- 
duce of  the  district  they  control.  If  ever  they  rise  above  that  limit 
the  natural  checks  of  famine,  and  of  pestilence  following  en- 
feeblement,  will  come  into  operation,  and  they  will  always  be 
kept  near  this  limit  by  the  natural  tendency  of  humanity  to 
increase.  The  limit  would  rise  with  increasing  public  intelli- 
gence, and  the  organization  of  the  towns  would  become  more 
definite. 

1 1  owe  the  fertilizing  suggestion  of  this  general  principle  to  a 
paper  by  Grant  Allen  that  I  read  long  ago  in  Longman's  Magazine. 

43 


ANTICIPATIONS 

coasts  (or  river-banks),  and  on  the  quality  and 
quantity  of  their  products,  and  near  these  ports, 
as  the  conveniences  of  civihzation  increased, 
would  appear  handicraft  towns — the  largest  pos- 
sible towns  of  a  foot-and-horse  civilization — with 
industries  of  such  a  nature  as  the  produce  of  their 
coasts  required. 

It  was  always  in  connection  with  a  port  or  navi- 
gable river  that  the  greater  towns  of  the  pre-rail- 
way  periods  arose,  a  day's  journey  away  from  the 
coast  when  sea  attack  was  probable,  and  shifting 
to  the  coast  itself  when  that  ceased  to  threaten. 
Such  sea -trading  handicraft  -  towns  as  Bruges, 
Venice,  Corinth,  or  London  were  the  largest  towns 
of  the  vanishing  order  of  things.  Very  rarely, 
except  in  China,  did  they  clamber  above  a  quarter 
of  a  million  inhabitants,  even  though  to  some  of 
them  there  was  presently  added  court  and  camp. 
In  China,  however,  a  gigantic  river  and  canal 
system,  laced  across  plains  of  extraordinary  fer- 
tility, has  permitted  the  growth  of  several  city 
aggregates  with  populations  exceeding  a  million, 
and  in  the  case  of  the  Hankow  trinity  of  cities 
exceeding  five  million  people. 

In  all  these  cases  the  position  and  the  popula- 
tion limit  were  entirely  determined  by  the  accessi- 
bility of  the  town  and  the  area  it  could  dominate 
for  the  purposes  of  trade.  And  not  only  were  the 
commercial  or  natural  towns  so  determined,  but 
the  pohtical  centres  were  also  finally  chosen  for 

44 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

strategic  considerations — in  a  word,  communica- 
tions. And  now,  perhaps,  the  real  significance 
of  the  previous  paper,  in  which  sea  velocities  of 
fifty  miles  an  hour,  and  land  travel  at  the  rate 
of  a  hundred,  and  even  cab  and  omnibus  journeys 
of  thirty  or  forty  miles,  were  shown  to  be  possible, 
becomes  more  apparent. 

At  the  first  sight  it  might  appear  as  though  the 
result  of  the  new  developments  wa^  simply  to 
increase  the  number  of  giant  cities  in  the  world 
by  rendering  them  possible  in  regions  where  they 
had  hitherto  been  impossible — concentrating  the 
trade  of  vast  areas  in  a  manner  that  had  hitherto 
been  entirely  characteristic  of  navigable  waters.  It 
might  seem  as  though  the  state  of  affairs  in  China, 
in  which  population  has  been  concentrated  about 
densely  congested  "million -cities/'  with  pauper 
masses,  public  charities,  and  a  crowded  struggle 
for  existence,  for  many  hundreds  of  years,  was 
merely  to  be  extended  over  the  whole  world.  We 
have  heard  so  much  of  the  "problem  of  our  great 
cities";  we  have  the  impressive  statistics  of  their 
growth;  the  belief  in  the  inevitableness  of  yet 
denser  and  more  multitudinous  agglomerations 
in  the  future  is  so  widely  diffused,  that  at  first 
sight  it  will  be  thought  that  no  other  motive  than 
a  wish  to  startle  can  dictate  the  proposition  that 
not  only  will  many  of  these  railway  -  begotten 
"  giant  cities  "  reach  their  maximum  in  the  com- 
mencing century,  but  that  in  all  probability  they, 

45 


ANTICIPATIONS 

and  not  only  they,  but  their  water-born  prototypes 
in  the  East  also,  are  destined  to  such  a  process 
of  dissection  and  diffusion  as  to  amount  almost 
to  obliteration,  so  far,  at  least,  as  the  blot  on  the 
map  goes,  within  a  measurable  further  space  of 
years. 

In  advancing  this  proposition,  the  present  writer 
is  disagreeably  aware  that  in  this  matter  he  has 
expressed  views  entirely  opposed  to  those  he  now 
propounds;  and  in  setting  forth  the  following 
body  of  considerations  he  tells  the  story  of  his 
own  disillusionment.  At  the  outset  he  took  for 
granted — and,  very  naturally,  he  wishes  to  imag- 
ine that  a  great  number  of  other  people  do  also 
take  for  granted — that  the  future  of  London,  for 
example,  is  largely  to  be  got  as  the  answer  to  a 
sort  of  rule-of-three  sura.  If  in  one  hundred  years 
the  population  of  London  has  been  multiplied 
by  seven,  then  in  two  hundred  years — !  And 
one  proceeds  to  pack  the  answer  in  gigantic  tene- 
ment-houses, looming  upon  colossal  roofed  streets, 
provide  it  with  moving  ways  (the  only  available 
transit  appliances  suited  to  such  dense  multitudes), 
and  develop  its  manners  and  morals  in  accord- 
ance with  the  laws  that  will  always  prevail  amid 
over -crowded  humanity  so  long  as  humanity 
endures.  The  picture  of  this  swarming  concen- 
trated humanity  has  some  effective  possibilities, 
but,  unhappily,  if,  instead  of  that  obvious  rule- 
of-three  sura,  one  resorts  to  an  analysis  of  operat- 

46 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

ing  causes,  its  plausibility  crumbles  away,  and  it 
gives  place  to  an  altogether  different  forecast — 
a  forecast,  indeed,  that  is  in  almost  violent  con- 
trast to  the  first  anticipation.  It  is  much  more 
probable  that  these  coming  cities  will  not  be,  in 
the  old  sense,  cities  at  all;  they  will  present  a  new 
and  entirely  different  phase  of  human  distribution. 

The  determining  factor  in  the  appearance  of 
great  cities  in  the  past,  and,  indeed,  up  to  the 
present  day,  has  been  the  meeting  of  two  or  more 
transit  lines,  the  confluence  of  two  or  more  streams 
of  trade,  and  easy  communication.  The  final 
limit  to  the  size  and  importance  of  the  great  city 
has  been  the  commercial  "sphere  of  influence" 
commanded  by  that  city,  the  capacity  of  the  al- 
luvial basin  of  its  commerce,  so  to  speak,  the  vol- 
ume of  its  river  of  trade.  About  the  meeting-point 
so  determined  the  population  so  determined  has 
grouped  itself — and  this  is  the  point  I  overlooked 
in  those  previous  vaticinations — in  accordance  with 
laws  that  are  also  considerations  of  transit. 

The  economic  centre  of  the  city  is  formed,  of 
course,  by  the  wharves  and  landing-places — and 
in  the  case  of  railway-fed  cities  by  the  termini — 
where  passengers  land  and  where  goods  are  land- 
ed, stored,  and  distributed.  Both  the  administrative 
and  business  community,  traders,  employers,  clerks, 
and  so  forth,  must  be  within  a  convenient  access 
of  this  centre;  and  the  families,  servants,  trades- 
men,  amusement  purveyors  dependent  on  these 

47 


ANTICIPATIONS 

again  must  also  come  within  a  maximum  distance. 
At  a  certain  stage  in  town-growth  the  pressure 
on  the  more  central  area  would  become  too  great 
for  habitual  family  life  there,  and  an  office  region 
would  diflferentiate  from  an  outer  region  of  homes. 
Beyond  these  two  zones,  again,  those  whose  con- 
nection with  the  great  city  was  merely  intermittent 
would  constitute  a  system  of  suburban  houses  and 
areas.  But  the  grouping  of  these,  also,  would  be 
determined  finally  by  the  convenience  of  access 
to  the  dominant  centre.  That  secondary  centres, 
literary,  social,  political,  or  military,  may  arise 
about  the  initial  trade  centre,  complicates  the 
application,  but  does  not  alter  the  principle  here 
stated.  They  must  all  be  within  striking  distance. 
The  day  of  twenty  -  four  hours  is  an  inexorable 
human  condition,  and  up  to  the  present  time  all 
intercourse  and  business  have  been  broken  into 
spells  of  definite  duration  by  intervening  nights. 
Moreover,  almost  all  effective  intercourse  has 
involved  personal  presence  at  the  point  where 
intercourse  occurs.  The  possibility,  therefore,  of 
going  and  coming  and  doing  that  day's  work 
has  hitherto  fixed  the  extreme  limits  to  which  a 
city  could  grow,  and  has  exacted  a  compactness 
which  has  always  been  very  undesirable  and 
which  is  now  for  the  first  time  in  the  world's  history 
no  longer  im|)erative. 

So  far  as  we  can  judge  without  a  close  and  un- 
congenial scrutiny  of  statistics,  that  daily  journey 

48 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

that  has  governed,  and  still  to  a  very  considerable 
extent  governs,  the  growth  of  cities,  has  had,  and 
probably  always  will  have,  a  maximum  limit  of 
two  hours,  one  hour  each  way  from  sleeping-place 
to  council  chamber,  counter,  workroom,  or  office- 
stool.  And,  taking  this  assumption  as  sound,  we 
C€Ui  state  precisely  the  maximum  area  of  various 
types  of  town.  A  pedestrian  agglomeration  such 
as  we  find  in  China,  and  such  as  most  of  the  Euro- 
pean towns  probably  were  before  the  nineteenth 
century,  would  be  swept  entirely  by  a  radius  of  four 
miles  about  the  business  quarter  and  industrial 
centre;  and,  under  these  circumstances,  where  the 
area  of  the  feeding  regions  has  been  very  large 
the  massing  of  human  beings  has  probably 
reached  its  extreme  limit.*  Of  course,  in  the 
case  of  a  navigable  river,  for  example,  the  com- 
mercial centre  might  be  elongated  into  a  line  and 
the  circle  of  the  city  modified  into  an  ellipse  with 
a  long  diameter  considerably  exceeding  eight 
miles,  as,  for  example,  in  the  case  of  Hankow. 

If,  now,  horseflesh  is  brought  into  the  problem, 
an  outer  radius  of  six  or  eight  miles  from  the  centre 
will  define  a  larger  area  in  which  the  carriage 
folk,  the  hackney  users,  the  omnibus  customers, 
and  their  domestics  and  domestic  camp  followers 
may  live  and  still  be  members  of  the  city.     Tow- 

*  It  is  worth  remarking  that  in  1801  the  density  of  population 
in  the  City  of  London  was  half  as  dense  again  as  tliat  of  any 
district,  even  of  the  densest  "  slum"  districts  to-day. 

4  49 


ANTICIPATIONS 

ards  that  limit  London  was  already  probably 
moving  at  the  accession  of  Queen  Victoria,  and  it 
was  clearly  the  absolute  limit  of  urban  growth 
— until  locomotive  mechanisms  capable  of  more 
than  eight  miles  an  hour  could  be  constructed. 

And  then  there  came  suddenly  the  railway 
and  the  steamship,  the  former  opening  with  ex- 
traordinary abruptness  a  series  of  vast  through- 
routes  for  trade,  the  latter  enormously  increasing 
the  security  and  economy  of  the  traffic  on  the  old 
water  routes.  For  a  time  neither  of  these  inven- 
tions w^as  applied  to  the  needs  of  intra-urban  tran- 
sit at  all.  For  a  time  they  were  purely  centripetal 
forces.  They  worked  simply  to  increase  the  general 
volimie  of  trade,  to  increase — that  is,  the  pressure 
of  population  upon  the  urban  centres.  As  a  con- 
sequence the  social  history  of  the  middle  and  later 
thirds  of  the  nineteenth  century,  not  simply  in 
England  but  all  over  the  civilized  world,  is  the 
history  of  a  gigantic  rush  of  population  into  the 
magic  radius  of — for  most  people — four  miles,  to 
suffer  there  physical  and  moral  disaster  less  acute, 
but,  finally,  far  more  appalling  to  the  imagination 
than  any  famine  or  pestilence  that  ever  swept  the 
world.  Well  has  Mr.  George  Gissing  named 
nineteenth  -  century  London  in  one  of  his  great 
novels  the  "Whirlpool,"  the  very  figure  for  the 
nineteenth  -  century  Great  City,  attractive,  tumul- 
tuous, and  spinning  down  to  death. 

But,  indeed,  these  great  cities  are  no  permanent 
50 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

maelstroms.  These  new  forces,  at  present  still  so 
potently  centripetal  in  their  influence,  bring  with 
them,  nevertheless,  the  distinct  promise  of  a  centri- 
fugal application  that  may  be  finally  equal  to  the 
complete  reduction  of  all  our  present  congestions. 
The  limit  of  the  pre-railway  city  was  the  limit  of 
man  and  horse.  But  already  that  limit  has  been 
exceeded,  and  each  day  brings  us  nearer  to  the 
time  when  it  will  be  thrust  outward  in  every  direc- 
tion with  an  effect  of  enormous  relief. 

So  far  the  only  additions  to  the  foot  and  horse 
of  the  old  dispensation  that  have  actually  come 
into  operation,  are  the  suburban  railways,  which 
render  possible  an  average  door  -  to  -  oflfice  hour's 
journey  of  ten  or  a  dozen  miles — further  only  in 
the  case  of  some  specially  favored  localities.  The 
star -shaped  contour  of  the  modem  great  city, 
thrusting  out  arms  along  every  available  railway 
line,  knotted  arms  of  which  every  knot  marks  a 
station,  testify  sufficiently  to  the  relief  of  pressure 
thus  afforded.  Great  Towns  before  this  century 
presented  rounded  contours  and  grew  as  a  puff- 
ball  swells ;  the  modern  Great  City  looks  like  some- 
thing that  has  burst  an  intolerable  envelope  and 
splashed.  But,  as  our  previous  paper  has  sought 
to  make  clear,  these  suburban  railways  are  the 
mere  first  rough  expedient  (rf  fax  more  convenient 
and  rapid  developments. 

We  are  —  as  the  census  returns  for  1901  quite 
clearly  show — in  the  early  phase  of  a  great  develop- 

51 


ANTICIPATIONS 

ment  of  centrifugal  possibilities.  And  since  it 
has  been  shown  that  a  city  of  pedestrians  is  in- 
exorably limited  by  a  radius  of  about  four  miles, 
and  that  a  horse-using  city  may  grow  out  to  seven 
or  eight,  it  follows  that  the  available  area  of  a 
city  which  can  offer  a  cheap  suburban  journey  of 
thirty  miles  an  hour  is  a  circle  with  a  radius  of 
thirty  miles.  And  is  it  too  much,  therefore,  in 
view  of  all  that  has  been  adduced  in  this  and  the 
previous  paper,  to  expect  that  the  available  area 
for  even  the  common  daily  toilers  of  the  great 
city  of  the  year  2000,  or  earlier,  will  have  a  radius 
very  much  larger  even  than  that?  Now,  a  circle 
with  a  radius  of  thirty  miles  gives  an  area  of  over 
2800  square  miles,  which  is  almost  a  quarter  that 
of  Belgium.  But  thirty  miles  is  only  a  very  mod- 
erate estimate  of  speed,  and  the  reader  of  the  former 
paper  will  agree,  I  think,  that  the  available  area 
for  the  social  equivalent  of  the  favored  season- 
ticket  holders  of  to-day  will  have  a  radius  of  over 
one  hundred  miles,  and  be  almost  equal  to  the 
area  of  Ireland.*  The  radius  that  will  sweep 
the  area  available  for  such  as  now  live  in  the  outer 
suburbs  will  include  a  still  vaster  area.  Indeed, 
it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  London  citizen 
of  the  year  2000  A.D.  may  have  a  choice  of  near- 
ly all  England  and  Wales  south  of  Nottingham 

*  Be  it  noted  that  the  phrase  "  available  area  "  is  used,  and 
various  other  modifying  considerations  altogether  waived  for 
the  present. 

52 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

and  east  of  Exeter  as  his  suburb,  and  that  the 
vast  stretch  of  country  from  Washington  to  Al- 
bany will  be  all  of  it  "available"  to  the  active 
citizen  of  New  York  and  Philadelphia  before  that 
date. 

This  does  not  for  a  moment  imply  that  cities  of 
the  density  of  our  existing  great  cities  will  spread 
to  these  limits.  Even  if  we  were  to  suppose  the 
increase  of  the  populations  of  the  great  cities  to 
go  on  at  its  present  rate,  this  enormous  exten- 
sion of  available  area  would  still  mean  a  great 
possibility  of  diffusion.  But  though  most  great 
cities  are  probably  still  very  far  from  their  max- 
ima, though  the  network  of  feeding  railways  has , 
still  to  spread  over  Africa  and  China,  and  though 
huge  areas  are  still  imperfectly  productive  for 
want  of  a  cultivating  population,  yet  it  is  well  to 
remember  that  for  each  great  city,  quite  irrespec- 
tive of  its  available  spaces,  a  maximum  of  popula- 
tion is  fixed.  Each  great  city  is  sustained  finally 
by  the  trade  and  production  of  a  certain  proportion 
of  the  world's  surface — by  the  area  it  commands 
commercially.  The  great  city  cannot  grow,  except 
as  a  result  of  some  quite  morbid  and  transitory 
process — to  be  cured  at  last  by  famine  and  dis- 
order— beyond  the  limit  the  commercial  capacity 
of  that  commanded  area  prescribes.  Long  before 
the  population  of  this  city,  with  its  inner  circle 
a  third  of  the  area  of  Belgium,  rose  towards  the 
old-fashioned  city  density,  this  restriction  would 

53 


ANTICIPATIONS 

come  in.  Even  if  we  allowed  for  considerable 
increase  in  the  production  of  food  stuflfs  in  the 
future,  it  still  remains  inevitable  that  the  increase 
of  each  city  in  the  world  must  come  at  last  upon 
arrest. 

Yet,  though  one  may  find  reasons  for  anticipat- 
ing that  this  city  will  in  the  end  overtake  and 
surpass  that  one  and  such-like  relative  prophesy- 
ing, it  is  difficult  to  find  any  data  from  which  to 
infer  the  absolute  numerical  limits  of  these  various 
diffused  cities.  Or,  perhaps,  it  is  more  seemly 
to  admit  that  no  such  data  have  occurred  to  the 
writer.  So  far  as  London,  St.  Petersburg,  and 
Berlin  go,  it  seems  fairly  safe  to  assume  that  they 
will  go  well  over  twenty  millions;  and  that  New 
York,  Philadelphia,  and  Chicago  will  probably, 
and  Hankow  almost  certainly,  reach  forty  millions. 
Yet  even  forty  millions  over  thirty-one  thousand 
square  miles  of  territory  is,  in  comparison  with 
four  millions  over  fifty  square  miles,  a  highly 
diffused  population. 

How  far  will  that  possible  diffusion  accomplish 
itself?  Let  us  first  of  all  consider  the  case  of  those 
classes  that  will  be  free  to  exercise  a  choice  in  the 
matter,  and  we  shall  then  be  in  a  better  position 
to  consider  those  more  numerous  classes  whose 
general  circumstances  are  practically  dictated  to 
them.  What  will  be  the  forces  acting  upon  the 
prosperous  household,  the  household  with  a  work- 
ing head  and  four  hundred  a  year  and  upwards 

54 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

to  live  upon,  in  the  days  to  come?  Will  the  resul- 
tant of  these  forces  be  as  a  rule  centripetal  or  cen- 
trifugal? Will  such  householders  in  the  greater 
London  of  2000  A.D.  still  cluster  for  the  most  part, 
as  they  do  to-day,  in  a  group  of  suburbs  as  close 
to  London  as  is  compatible  with  a  certain  fashion- 
able maximum  of  garden  space  and  air;  or  will 
they  leave  the  ripened  gardens  and  the  no  longer 
brilliant  villas  of  Surbiton  and  Norwood,  Tooting 
and  Beckenham,  to  other  and  less  independent 
people?  First,  let  us  weigh  the  centrifugal  at- 
tractions. 

The  first  of  these  is  what  is  known  as  the  passion 
for  nature,  that  passion  for  hill-side,  wind,  and 
sea  that  is  evident  in  so  many  people  nowadays, 
either  frankly  expressed  or  disguising  itself  as  a 
passion  for  goljfing,  fishing,  hunting,  yachting, 
or  cycling;  and,  secondly,  there  is  the  allied 
charm  of  cultivation,  and  especially  of  gardening, 
a  charm  that  is  partly  also  the  love  of  dominion, 
perhaps,  and  partly  a  personal  love  for  the  beauty 
of  trees  and  flowers  and  natural  things.  Through 
that  we  come  to  a  third  factor,  that  craving — 
strongest,  perhaps,  in  those  Low  German  peoples, 
who  are  now  ascendent  throughout  the  world — 
for  a  little  private  imperium  such  as  a  house  or 
cottage  "in  its  own  grounds"  affords;  and  from 
that  we  pass  on  to  the  intense  desire  so  many 
women  feel — and  just  the  women,  too,  who  will 
mother   the  future — their   almost   instinctive   de- 

55 


ANTICIPATIONS 

mand,  indeed,  for  a  household,  a  separate  sacred 
and  distinctive  household,  built  and  ordered  after 
their  own  hearts,  such  as  in  its  fulness  only  the 
country-side  permits.  Add  to  these  things  the 
healtlifulness  of  the  country  for  young  children, 
and  the  wholesome  isolation  that  is  possible  from 
much  that  irritates,  stimulates  prematurely,  and 
corrupts  in  crowded  centres,  and  the  chief  positive 
centrifugal  inducements  are  stated,  inducements 
that  no  progress  of  inventions,  at  any  rate,  can 
ever  seriously  weaken.  What  now  are  the  cen- 
tripetal forces  against  which  these  inducements 
contend? 

In  the  first  place,  there  are  a  group  of  forces  that 
will  diminish  in  strength.  There  is  at  present  the 
greater  convenience  of  "  shopping  "  within  a  short 
radius  of  the  centre  of  the  great  city,  a  very  im- 
portant consideration,  indeed,  to  many  wives  and 
mothers.  All  the  inner  and  many  of  the  outer 
suburbs  of  London  obtain  an  enormous  proportion 
of  the  ordinary  household  goods  from  half  a  dozen 
huge  furniture,  grocery,  and  drapery  firms,  each 
of  which  has  been  enabled  by  the  dearness  and 
inefficiency  of  the  parcels  distribution  of  the  post- 
office  and  railways  to  elaborate  a  now  very  efficient 
private  system  of  taking  orders  and  delivering 
goods.  Collectively  these  great  businesses  have 
been  able  to  establish  a  sort  of  monopoly  of 
suburban  trade,  to  overwhelm  the  small  suburban 
general   tradesman  (a   fate  that   was   inevitable 

56 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

for  him  in  some  way  or  other),  and — which  is  a 
positive  world-wide  misfortune — to  overwhelm  also 
many  highly  specialized  shops  and  dealers  of  the 
central  district.  Suburban  people  nowadays  get 
their  wine  and  their  novels,  their  clothes  and  their 
amusements,  their  furniture  and  their  food,  from 
some  one  vast  indiscriminate  shop  or  "store" 
full  of  respectable  mediocre  goods,  as  excellent  a 
thing  for  housekeeping  as  it  is  disastrous  to  taste 
and  individuality.*  But  it  is  doubtful  if  the  de- 
livery organization  of  these  great  stores  is  any 
more  permanent  than  the  token  coinage  of  the 
tradespeople  of  the  last  century.  Just  as  it  was 
with  that  interesting  development,  so  now  it  is 
with  parcels  distribution:  private  enterprise  sup- 
plies in  a  partial  manner  a  public  need,  and  with 
the  organization  of  a  public  parcels  and  goods 
delivery  on  cheap  and  sane  lines  in  the  place  of 
our  present  complex,  stupid,  confusing,  untrust- 
worthy, and  fantastically  costly  chaos  of  post- 
office,  railways,  and  carriers,  it  is  quite  conceivable 
that  Messrs.  Omnium  will  give  place  again  to 
specialized  shops. 

It  must  always  be  remembered  how  timid,  ten- 
tative, and  dear  the  postal  and  telephone  services  of 

*  Their  temporary  suppression  of  the  specialist  is,  indeed, 
carried  to  such  an  extent  that  one  may  see  even  such  things 
as  bronze  ornaments  and  personal  jewellery  listed  in  Messrs. 
Omnium's  list,  and  stored  in  list  designs  and  pattern  ;  and  their 
assistants  will  inform  you  that  their  brooch  No.  175  is  now 
"  very  much  worn,"  without  either  blush  or  smile. 

57 


ANTICIPATIONS 

even  the  most  civilized  countries  still  are,  and  how 
inexorably  the  needs  of  revenue,  public  profit,  and 
convenience  fight  in  these  departments  against  the 
tradition  of  official  leisure  and  dignity.  There 
is  no  reason  now,  except  that  the  thing  is  not 
yet  properly  organized,  why  a  telephone  call  from 
any  point  in  such  a  small  country  as  England  to 
any  other  should  cost  much  more  than  a  post-card. 
There  is  no  reason  now,  save  railway  rivalries 
and  retail  ideas — obstacles  some  able  and  active 
man  is  certain  to  sweep  away  sooner  or  later — 
why  the  post-office  should  not  deliver  parcels  any- 
where within  a  radius  of  a  hundred  miles  in  a 
few  hours  at  a  penny  or  less  for  a  pound  and  a 
little  over,*  put  our  newspapers  in  our  letter-boxes 
direct  from  the  printing  office,  and,  in  fact,  hand 
in  nearly  every  constant  need  of  the  civilized  house- 
hold, except  possibly  butcher's  meat,  coals,  green- 
grocery, and  drink.  And  since  there  is  no  reason, 
but  quite  removable  obstacles,  to  prevent  this 
development  of  the  post-office,  I  imagine  it  will  be 
doing  all  these  things  within  the  next  half-century. 
When  it  is,  this  particular  centripetal  pull,  at  any 
rate,  will  have  altogether  ceased  to  operate, 

A   second   important   centripetal    consideration 
at  present  is  the  desirability  of  access  to  good 


•  The  present  system  of  charging  parcels  by  the  pound,  when 
goods  are  sold  by  the  pound,  and  so  getting  a  miserly  profit 
in  the  packing,  is  surely  one  of  the  absurdest  disregards  of  the 
obvious  it  is  possible  to  imagine. 

58 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

schools  and  to  the  doctor.  To  leave  the  great 
centres  is  either  to  abandon  one's  children  or  to 
buy  air  for  them  at  the  cost  of  educational  dis- 
advantages. But  access,  be  it  noted,  is  another 
word  for  transit.  It  is  doubtful  if  these  two  needs 
will  so  much  keep  people  close  to  the  great  city 
centres  as  draw  them  together  about  secondary 
centres.  New  centres  they  may  be — compare 
Hindhead,  for  example — in  many  cases;  but  also, 
it  may  be,  in  many  cases  the  more  healthy  and 
picturesque  of  the  existing  small  towns  will  develop 
a  new  life.  Already  in  the  case  of  the  London 
area,  such  once  practically  autonomous  places  as 
Guildford,  Tunbridge  Wells,  and  Godalming  have 
become  economically  the  centres  of  lax  suburbs, 
and  the  same  fate  may  very  probably  overtake, 
for  example,  Shrewsbury,  Stratford,  and  Exeter, 
and  remoter  and  yet  remoter  townships.  Indeed, 
for  all  that  this  particular  centripetal  force  can 
do.  the  confluent  "  residential  suburbs  "  of  London, 
of  the  great  Lancashire  -  Yorkshire  city,  and  of 
the  Scotch  city,  may  quite  conceivably  replace 
the  summer  lodging-house  watering-places  of 
to-day,  and  extend  itself  right  round  the  coast  of 
Great  Britain,  before  the  end  of  the  next  century, 
and  every  open  space  of  mountain  and  heather 
be  dotted — not  too  thickly — with  clumps  of  prosper- 
ous houses  about  school,  doctor,  engineers,  book, 
and  provision  shops. 
A  third  centripetal  force  will  not  be  set  aside  so 
59 


ANTICIPATIONS 

easily.  The  direct  antagonist  it  is  to  that  love  of 
nature  that  drives  people  out  to  moor  and  mountain. 
One  may  call  it  the  love  of  the  crowd ;  and  closely 
allied  to  it  is  that  love  of  the  theatre  which  holds  so 
many  people  in  bondage  to  the  Strand.  Charles 
Lamb  was  the  Richard  JefTeries  of  this  group  of 
tendencies,  and  the  current  disposition  to  ex- 
aggerate the  opposition  force,  especially  among 
English-speaking  peoples,  should  not  bind  us 
to  the  reality  of  their  strength.  Moreover,  in- 
terweaving with  these  influences  that  draw  people 
together  are  other  more  egotistical  and  intenser 
motives,  ardent  in  youth  and  by  no  means — to 
judge  by  the  Folkestone  Leas — extinct  in  age, 
the  love  of  dress,  the  love  of  the  crush,  the  hot 
passion  for  the  promenade.  Here  no  doubt  what 
one  may  speak  of  loosely  as  "racial"  charac- 
teristics count  for  much.  The  common  actor  or 
actress  of  all  nationalities,  the  Neapolitan,  the 
modern  Roman,  the  Parisian,  the  Hindoo,  I  am 
told,  and  that  new  and  interesting  type,  the  rich 
and  liberated  Jew  emerging  from  his  Ghetto  and 
free  now  absolutely  to  show  what  stuff  he  is  made 
of,  flame  out  most  gloriously  in  this  direction. 
To  a  certain  extent  this  group  of  tendencies  may 
lead  to  the  formation  of  new  secondary  centres 
within  the  "  available"  area,  theatrical  and  musical 
centres — centres  of  extreme  fashion  and  selectness, 
centres  of  smartness  and  opulent  display — but  it 
is  probable  that  for  the  large  number  of  people 

6g 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

throughout  the  world  who  cannot  afford  to  main- 
tain households  in  duplicate  these  will  be  for  many 
years  yet  strictly  centripetal  forces,  and  will  keep 
them  within  the  radius  marked  by  whatever  will 
be  the  future  equivalent  in  length  of,  say,  the  pres- 
ent two-shilling  cab  ride  in  London. 

And.  after  all,  for  all  such  "shopping"  as  one 
cannot  do  by  telephone  or  post-card,  it  will  still  be 
natural  for  the  shops  to  be  gathered  together  in 
some  central  place.  And  "shopping"  needs  re- 
freshment, and  may  culminate  in  relaxation. 
So  that  Bond  Street  and  Regent  Street,  the  Boule- 
vard des  Capuchins,  the  Corso,  and  Broadway 
will  still  be  brilliant  and  crowded  for  many  years 
for  all  the  diffusion  that  is  here  forecast — all  the 
more  brilliant  and  crowded,  perhaps,  for  the  lack 
of  a  thronging  horse  traffic  down  their  central 
ways.  But  the  very  fact  that  the  old  nucleus 
is  still  to  be  the  best  place  for  all  who  trade  in 
a  concourse  of  people,  for  novelty  shops  and  art 
shops  and  theatres  and  business  buildings,  by 
keeping  up  the  central  ground  values  will  operate 
against  residence  there  and  shift  the  "masses" 
outwardly. 

And  once  people  have  been  driven  into  cab, 
train,  or  omnibus,  the  only  reason  why  they  should 
get  out  to  a  residence  here  rather  than  there  is 
the  necessity  of  saving  time,  and  such  a  violent 
upward  gradient  of  fares  as  will  quite  outbalance 
the  downward  gradient  of  ground  values.     We 

6i 


ANTICIPATIONS 

have,  however,  already  forecast  a  swift,  varied, 
and  inevitably  competitive  suburban  traffic.  And 
so,  though  the  centre  will  probably  still  remain 
the  centre  and  "town,"  it  will  be  essentially  a 
bazaar,  a  great  gallery  of  shops  and  places  of 
concourse  and  rendezvous,  a  pedestrian  place, 
its  pathways  reinforced  by  lifts  and  moving  plat- 
forms, and  shielded  from  the  weather,  and  al- 
together a  very  spacious,  brilliant,  and  entertaining 
agglomeration. 

Enough  now  has  been  said  to  determine  the  gen- 
eral nature  of  the  expansion  of  the  great  cities 
in  the  future,  so  far  as  the  more  prosperous  classes 
are  concerned.  It  will  not  be  a  regular  diffusion 
like  the  diffusion  of  a  gas,  but  a  process  of  throw- 
ing out  the  "  homes  "  and  of  segregating  various 
types  of  people.  The  omens  seem  to  point  pretty 
unmistakably  to  a  wide  and  quite  imprecedented 
diversity  in  the  various  suburban  townships  and 
suburban  districts.  Of  that  aspect  of  the  matter 
a  later  paper  must  treat.  It  is  evident  that  from 
the  outset  racial  and  national  characteristics  will 
tell  in  this  diffusion.  We  are  getting  near  the 
end-  of  the  great  Democratic,  Wholesale,  or  Homo- 
geneous phase  in  the  world's  history.  The  sport- 
loving  Englishman,  the  sociable  Frenchman,  the 
vehement  American  will  each  diffuse  his  own  great 
city  in  his  own  way. 

And  now,  how  will  the  increase  in  the  facilities 
of  communication  we  have  assumed  affect  the  con- 

62 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

dition  of  those  whose  circumstances  are  more 
largely  dictated  by  economic  forces?  The  mere 
diffusion  of  a  large  proportion  of  the  prosperous 
and  relativeh^  free,  and  the  multiplication  of  vari- 
ous types  of  road  and  mechanical  traction,  means, 
of  course,  that  in  this  way  alone  a  perceptible 
diffusion  of  the  less  independent  classes  will  occur. 
To  the  subsidiary  centres  will  be  drawn  doctor 
and  school-master,  and  various  dealers  in  fresh 
provisions,  baker,  grocer,  butcher ;  or  if  they  are  al- 
ready established  there  they  will  flourish  more  and 
more,  and  about  them  the  convenient  home  of  the 
future,  with  its  numerous  electrical  and  mechani- 
cal appliances,  and  the  various  bicycles,  motor- 
cars, photographic  and  phonographic  apparatus 
that  will  be  included  in  its  equipment  will  gather 
a  population  of  repairers,  "  accessory  "  dealers,  and 
working  engineers,  a  growing  class  which  from 
its  necessary  intelligence  and  numbers  will  play 
a  very  conspicuous  part  in  the  social  development 
of  the  twentieth  century.  The  much  more  elab- 
orate post-office  and  telephone  services  will  also 
bring  intelligent  ingredients  to  these  suburban 
nuclei,  these  restorations  of  the  old  villages  and 
country  towns.  And  the  sons  of  the  cottager 
within  the  affected  area  will  develop  into  the  skilled 
vegetable  or  flower  gardeners,  the  skilled  ostler — 
with  some  veterinary  science — and  so  forth,  for 
whom  also  there  will  evidently  be  work  and  a 
living.     And  dotted  at  every  convenient  position 

63 


ANTICIPATIONS 

along  the  new  roads,  availing  themselves  no  doubt 
whenever  possible  of  the  picturesque  inns  that  the 
old  coaching  days  have  left  us,  will  be  way-side 
restaurants  and  tea-houses,  and  motor  and  cycle 
stores  and  repair  places.  So  much  diffusion  is 
practically  inevitable. 

In  addition,  as  we  have  already  intimated, 
many  Londoners  in  the  future  may  abandon  the 
city  office  altogether,  preferring  to  do  their  busi- 
ness in  more  agreeable  surroundings.  Such  a 
business  as  book  publishing,  for  example,  has  no 
unbreakable  bonds  to  keep  it  in  the  region  of  high 
rent  and  congested  streets.  The  days  when  the 
financial  fortunes  of  books  depended  upon  the 
colloquial  support  of  influential  people  in  a  small 
society  are  past;  neither  publishers  nor  authors 
as  a  class  have  any  relation  to  society  at  all,  and 
actual  access  to  newspaper  offices  is  necessary 
only  to  the  rginker  forms  of  literary  imposture. 
That  personal  intercourse  between  publishers  and 
the  miscellaneous  race  of  authors  which  once 
justified  the  central  position  has,  I  am  told,  long 
since  ceased.  And  the  withdrawing  publishers 
may  very  well  take  with  them  the  printers  and 
binders,  and  attract  about  them  their  illustrators 
and  designers.  .  .  .  So,  as  a  typical  instance,  one 
—now  urban — trade  may  detach  itself. 

Publishing  is,  however,  only  one  of  the  many 
similar  trades  equally  profitable  and  equally  likely 
to  move  outward  to  secondary  centres,   with  the 

64 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

development  and  cheapening  of  transit.  It  is  all 
a  question  of  transit.  Limitation  of  transit  con- 
tracts the  city,  facilitation  expands  and  dis- 
perses it.  All  this  cavSe  for  dikusion  so  far  is  built 
up  entirely  on  the  hypothesis  we  attempted  to 
establish  in  the  first  paper,  that  transit  of  persons 
and  goods  alike  is  to  become  easier,  swifter,  and 
altogether  better  organized  than  it  is  at  present. 
The  telephone  will  almost  certainly  prove  a  very 
potent  auxiHary,  indeed,  to  the  forces  making  for 
diffusion.  At  present  that  convenience  is  still 
needlessly  expensive  in  Great  Britain,  and  a  scan- 
dalously stupid  business  conflict  between  tele- 
phone company  and  post-office,  delays,  compli- 
cates, and  makes  costly  and  exasperating  all 
trunk  communications;  but  even  under  these  dis- 
advantages the  thing  is  becoming  a  factor  in  the 
life  of  ordinary  villadom.  Consider  all  that  lies 
within  its  possibilities.  Take  first  the  domestic 
and  social  side;  almost  all  the  labor  of  ordinary 
shopping  can  be  avoided — goods  nowadays  can 
be  ordered  and  sent  either  as  sold  outright,  or 
on  approval,  to  any  place  within  a  hundred  miles 
of  London,  and  in  one  day  they  can  be  examined, 
discussed,  and  returned — at  any  rate  in  theory. 
The  mistress  of  the  house  has  all  her  local  trades- 
men, all  the  great  London  shops,  the  circulating 
library,  the  theatre  box-office,  the  post-office  and 
cab-rank,  the  nurses'  institute  and  the  doctor, 
within  reach  of  her  hand.  The  instrument  we 
s  65 


ANTICIPATIONS 

may  confidently  expect  to  improve,  but  even  now 
speech  is  perfectly  clear  and  distinct  over  several 
hundred  miles  of  wire.  Appointments  and  invita- 
tions can  be  made;  and  at  a  cost  varying  from  a 
penny  to  two  shillings  any  one  within  two  hundred 
miles  of  home  may  speak  day  or  night  into  the 
ear  of  his  or  her  household.  Were  it  not  for  that 
unmitigated  public  nuisance,  the  practical  control 
of  our  post-office  by  non-dismissible  civil  servants, 
appointed  so  young  as  to  be  entirely  ignorant  of 
the  unofficial  world,  it  would  be  possible  now  to 
send  urgent  messages  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or 
night  to  any  part  of  the  world ;  and  even  our  sacred 
institution  of  the  civil  service  can  scarcely  prevent 
this  desirable  consummation  for  many  years  more. 
The  business  man  may  sit  at  home  in  his  library 
and  bargain,  discuss,  promise,  hint,  threaten, 
tell  such  lies  as  he  dare  not  write,  and,  in  fact,  do 
everything  that  once  demanded  a  personal  en- 
counter. Already  for  a  great  number  of  businesses 
it  is  no  longer  necessary  that  the  office  should  be 
in  London,  and  only  habit,  tradition,  and  minor 
considerations  keep  them  there.  With  the  steady 
cheapening  and  the  steady  increase  in  efficiency 
of  postal  and  telephonic  facilities,  and  of  goods 
transit,  it  seems  only  reasonable  to  anticipate 
the  need  for  that  expensive  office  and  the  irk- 
some daib'^  journey  will  steadily  decline.  In  other 
words,  what  will  still  be  economically  the  "city." 
as  distinguished  from  the  "agricultural"  popula- 

66 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

tion,  will  probably  be  free  to  extend,  in  the  case 
of  all  the  prosperous  classes  not  tied  to  large  estab- 
lishments in  need  of  personal  supervision,  far  be- 
yond the  extreme  limits  of  the  daily  hour  journey. 

But  the  diffusion  of  the  prosperous,  indepen- 
dent, and  managing  classes  involves  in  itself  a 
very  considerable  diffusion  of  the  purelj^  "work- 
ing" classes  also.  Their  centres  of  occupation 
will  be  distributed,  and  their  freedom  to  live  at 
some  little  distance  from  their  work  will  be  in- 
creased. Whether  this  will  mean  dotting  the 
country  with  dull,  ugly  little  streets,  slum  villages, 
like  Buckfastleigh,  in  Devon,  for  example,  or 
whether  it  may  result  in  entirely  different  and 
novel  aspects,  is  a  point  for  which  at  present  we 
are  not  ready.  But  it  bears  upon  the  question 
that  ugliness  and  squalor  upon  the  main  road 
will  appeal  to  the  more  prosperous  for  remedy 
with  far  more  vigor  than  when  they  are  stowed 
compactly  in  a  slum. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  demonstrate  that  old 
"town"  and  "city"  will  be,  in  truth,  terms  as 
obsolete  as  "mail  coach."  For  these  new  areas 
that  will  grow  out  of  them  we  want  a  term,  and 
the  administrative  "urban  district"  presents  it- 
self with  a  convenient  air  of  suggestion.  We 
may  for  our  present  purposes  call  these  coming 
town  provinces  "  urban  regions. "  Practically,  by 
a  process  of  confluence,  the  whole  of  Great  Britain 
south  of  the  Highlands  seems  destined  to  become 

67 


ANTICIPATIONS 

such  an  urban  region,  laced  all  together  not  only 
by  railway  and  telegraph,  but  by  novel  roads 
such  as  we  forecast  in  the  former  chapter,  and 
by  a  dense  network  of  telephones,  parcels  delivery- 
tubes,  and  the  like  nervous  and  arterial  connec- 
tions. 

It  w411  certainly  be  a  curious  and  varied  region, 
far  less  monotonous  than  our  present  English 
world,  still  in  its  thinner  regions,  at  any  rate, 
wooded,  perhaps  rather  more  abundantly  wooded, 
breaking  continually  into  park  and  garden,  and 
with  everywhere  ^  scattering  of  houses.  These  will 
not,  as  a  rule,  I  should  fancy,  follow  the  fashion 
of  the  vulgar  ready -built  villas  of  the  existing 
suburb,  because  the  freedom  people  will  be  able  to 
exercise  in  the  choice  of  a  site  will  rob  the  "  build- 
ing-estate" promoter  of  his  local  advantage;  in 
many  cases  the  houses  may  very  probably  be 
personal  homes,  built  for  themselves  as  much  as 
the  Tudor  manor-houses  were,  and  even,  in  some 
cases,  as  aesthetically  right.  Each  district,  I 
am  inclined  to  think,  will  develop  its  own  differ- 
ences of  type  and  style.  As  one  travels  through 
the  urban  region,  one  will  traverse  open,  breezy, 
"horsy"  suburbs,  smart  white  gates  and  palings 
everywhere,  good  turf,  a  grand -stand  shining 
pleasantly;  gardening  districts  all  set  with  gables 
and  roses,  holly  hedges,  and  emerald  lawns ;  pleas- 
ant homes  among  heathery  moorlands  and  golf 
links,  and  river  districts  with  gayly  painted  boat- 

68 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

houses  peeping  from  the  osiers.  Then  presently 
a  gathering  of  houses  closer  together,  and  a  prom- 
enade and  a  whiff  of  band  and  dresses,  and  then, 
perhaps,  a  little  island  of  agriculture,  hops,  or  straw- 
berry gardens,  fields  of  gray -plumed  artichokes, 
white  -  painted  orchard,  or  brightly  neat  poultry 
farm.  Through  the  varied  country  the  new  wide 
roads  will  run,  here  cutting  through  a  crest  and 
there  running  like  some  colossal  aqueduct  across 
a  valley,  swarming  always  with  a  multitudinous 
traffic  of  bright,  swift  (and  not  necessarily  ugly) 
mechanisms;  and  everywhere  amid  the  fields  and 
trees  linking  wires  will  stretch  from  pole  to  pole. 
Ever  and  again  there  will  appear  a  cluster  of  cot- 
tages— cottagfes  into  which  we  shall  presently 
look  more  closely — about  some  works  or  workings, 
works  it  may  be  with  the  smoky  chinmey  of  to-day 
replaced  by  a  gayly  painted  wind-wheel  or  water- 
wheel  to  gather  and  store  the  force  for  the  ma- 
chinery; and  ever  and  again  will  come  a  little 
town,  with  its  cherished  ancient  church  or  cathe- 
dral, its  school  buildings  and  museums,  its  rail- 
way station,  perhaps  its  fire  station,  its  inns  and 
restaurants,  and  with  all  the  wires  of  the  country- 
side converging  to  its  offices.  All  that  is  pleasant 
and  fair  of  our  present  country-side  may  con- 
ceivably still  be  there  among  the  other  things. 
There  is  no  reason  why  the  essential  charm  of  the 
country  should  disappear;  the  new  roads  will  not 
supersede  the  present  high  roads,  which  will  still  be 

69 


ANTICIPATIONS 

necessary  for  horses  and  subsidiary  traffic;  and 
the  lanes  and  hedges,  the  field  paths  and  wild 
flowers,  will  still  have  their  ample  justification. 
A  certain  lack  of  solitude  there  may  be  perhaps, 
and — 

Will  conspicuous  advertisements  play  any  part 
in  the  landscape? 

But  I  find  my  pen  is  running  ahead,  an  imag- 
ination prone  to  realistic  constructions  is  strug- 
gling to  paint  a  picture  altogether  prematurely. 
There  is  very  much  to  be  weighed  and  decided 
before  we  can  get  from  our  present  generalization 
to  the  style  of  architecture  these  houses  will  show, 
and  to  the  power  and  nature  of  the  public  taste. 
We  have  laid  down  now  the  broad  lines  of  road, 
railway,  and  sea  transit  in  the  coming  century, 
and  we  have  got  this  general  prophecy  of  "  urban 
regions"  established,  and  for  the  present  that 
much  must  suffice. 

And  as  for  the  world  beyond  our  urban  regions? 
The  same  line  of  reasoning  that  leads  to  the  ex- 
pectation that  the  city  will  diffuse  itself  until  it 
has  taken  up  considerable  areas  and  many  of 
the  characteristics,  the  greenness,  the  fresh  air, 
of  what  is  now  country,  leads  us  to  suppose  also 
that  the  country  will  take  to  itself  many  of  the 
qualities  of  the  city.  The  old  antithesis  will,  in- 
deed, cease,  the  boundary  lines  will  altogether  dis- 
appear ;  it  will  become,  indeed,  merely  a  question 
of  more  or  less  populous.     There  will  be  horticult- 

70 


THE  PROBABLE  DIFFUSION  OF  GREAT  CITIES 

ure  and  agriculture  going  on  within  the  "  urban 
regions/'  and  "urbanity"  without  them.  Every- 
where, indeed,  over  the  land  of  the  globe  between 
the  frozen  circles,  the  railway  and  the  new  roads 
will  spread,  the  network  of  communication  wires 
and  safe  and  convenient  ways.  To  receive  the 
daily  paper  a  few  hours  late,  to  wait  a  day  or  so  for 
goods  one  has  ordered,  will  be  the  extreme  measure 
of  rusticity  save  in  a  few  remote  islands  and  in- 
accessible places.  The  character  of  the  meshes 
in  that  wider  network  of  roads  that  will  be  the 
country,  as  distinguished  from  the  urban  district, 
will  vary  with  the  soil,  the  climate,  and  the  tenure 
of  the  land — will  vary,  too,  with  the  racial  and' 
national  differences.  But  throughout  all  that 
follows  this  mere  relativity  of  the  new  sort  of 
town  to  the  new  sort  of  country  over  which  the 
new  sorts  of  people  we  are  immediately  to  con- 
sider will  be  scattered,  must  be  borne  in  mind. 

[At  the  risk  of  insistence,  I  must  repeat  that, 
so  far,  I  have  been  studiously  taking  no  account 
of  the  fact  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  boundary 
line  or  a  foreigner  in  the  world.  It  will  be  far  the 
best  thing  to  continue  to  do  this  until  we  can  get 
out  all  that  will  probably  happen  universally  or 
generally,  and  in  particular  the  probable  changes 
in  social  forces,  social  apparatus,  and  internal 
political  methods.  We  shall  then  come  to  the 
discussion   of   language,   nationality,  and   inter- 

71 


ANTICIPATIONS 

national  conflicts,  equipped  with  such  an  array 
of  probabiUties  and  possibiHties  as  will  enable 
us  to  guess  at  these  special  issues  with  an  ap- 
pearance of  far  more  precision  than  would  be  the 
case  if  we  considered  them  now.] 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 


DEVELOPING   SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 


THE  mere  differences  in  thickness  of  population 
and  -facility  of  movement  that  have  been  dis- 
cussed thus  far,  will  involve  consequences  remark- 
able enough,  upon  the  facies  of  the  social  body ;  but 
there  are  certain  still  broader  features  of  the  social 
order  of  the  coming  time,  less  intimately  related- 
to  transit,  that  it  will  be  convenient  to  discuss  at 
this  stage.  They  are  essentially  outcomes  of  the 
enormous  development  of  mechanism  which  has 
been  the  cardinal  feature  of  the  nineteenth  century ; 
for  this  development,  by  altering  the  method  and 
proportions  of  almost  all  human  undertakings,* 
has  altered  absolutely  the  grouping  and  character 
of  the  groups  of  human  beings  engaged  upon 
them. 

Throughout  the  world  for  forty  centuries  the 
more  highly  developed  societies  have  always 
presented  under  a  considerable  variety  of  super- 
ficial   differences    certain    features    in    common. 

*  Even  the  characteristic  conditions  of  writing  books,  that 
least  mechanical  of  pursuits,  have  been  profoundly  affected 
by  the  typewriter. 

75 


ANTICIPATIONS 

Always  at  the  base  of  the  edifice,  supporting  all, 
subordinate  to  all,  and  the  most  necessary  of  all, 
there  has  been  the  working  cultivator,  peasant, 
serf,  or  slave.  Save  for  a  little  water-power,  a 
little  use  of  windmills,  the  traction  of  a  horse  or 
mule,  this  class  has  been  the  source  of  all  the  work 
upon  which  the  community  depends.  And,  more- 
over, whatever  labor  town  developments  have 
demanded  has  been  supplied  by  the  muscle  of  its 
fecund  ranks.  It  has  been,  in  fact — and  to  some 
extent  still  is — the  multitudinous  living  machinery 
of  the  old  social  order;  it  carried,  cropped,  tilled, 
built,  and  made.  And,  directing  and  sometimes 
owning  this  human  machinery,  there  has  always 
been  a  superior  class,  bound  usually  by  a  point  of 
honor  not  to  toil,  often  warlike,  often  equestrian, 
and  sometimes  cultivated.  In  England  this  is 
the  gentility,  in  most  European  countries  it  is 
organized  as  a  nobility,  it  is  represented  in  the 
history  of  India  by  the  "  twice-born "  castes,  and 
in  China — the  most  philosophically  conceived  and 
the  most  stably  organized  social  system  the  old 
order  ever  developed — it  finds  its  equivalent  in 
the  members  of  a  variously  buttoned  mandarinate, 
who  ride,  not  on  horses,  but  on  a  once  adequate 
and  still  respectable  erudition.  These  two  pri- 
mary classes  may  and  do  become  in  many  cases 
complicated  by  subdivisions;  the  peasant  class 
may  split  into  farmers  and  laborers,  the  gentle- 
men admit  a  series  of  grades  and  orders,  kings, 

76 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

dukes,  earls,  and  the  like,  but  the  broad  distinction 
remains  intact,  as  though  it  was  a  distinction 
residing  in  the  nature  of  things.* 

From  the  very  dawn  of  history  until  the  first 
beginnings  of  mechanism  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, this  simple  scheme  of  orders  was  the  uni- 
versal organization  of  all  but  savage  humanity, 
and  the  chief  substance  of  history  until  these  later 
years  has  been  in  essence  the  perpetual  endeavor 
of  specific  social  systems  of  this  type  to  attain  in 
every  region  the  locally  suitable  permanent  form, 
in  face  of  those  two  inveterate  enemies  of  human 
stability,  innovation,  and  that  secular  increase 
in  population  that  security  permits.  The  im- 
perfection of  the  means  of  communication  render- 
ed political  unions  of  a  greater  area  than  that 
swept  by  a  hundred-mile  radius  highly  unstable. 
li  was  a  world  of  small  states.  Lax  empires  came 
and  went,  at  the  utmost  they  were  the  linking  of 
practically  autonomous  states  under  a  common 
Pax.  Wars  were  usually  wars  between  king- 
doms— conflicts  of  this  local  experiment  in  social 


*  To  these  two  primary  classes  the  more  complicated  societies 
have  added  others.  There  is  the  priest,  almost  always  in  the 
social  order  of  the  pre-railway  period,  an  integral  part,  a  func- 
tional organ  of  the  social  body,  and  there  are  the  lawyer  and 
the  physician.  And  in  the  towns — constituting,  indeed,  the 
towns — there  appear,  as  an  outgrowth  of  the  toiling  class,  a 
little  emancipated  from  the  gentleman's  direct  control,  the  crafts- 
man, the  merchant,  and  the  trading  sailor,  essentially  accessory 
classes,  producers  of,  and  dealers  in,  the  accessories  of  life,  and 
mitigating  and  clouding  only  verj'  slightly  that  broad  duality. 

77 


ANTICIPATIONS 

ofganization  with  that.  Through  all  the  his- 
torical period  these  two  well-defined  classes  of 
gentle  and  simple  acted  and  reacted  upon  each 
other,  every  individual  in  each  class  driven  by  that 
same  will  to  live  and  do,  that  imperative  of  self- 
establishment  and  aggression  that  is  the  spirit 
of  this  world.  Until  the  coming  of  gunpowder, 
the  man  on  horseback  —  commonly  with  some 
'vSort  of  armor — was  invincible  in  battle  in  the  open. 
Wherever  the  land  lay  wide  and  unbroken,  and 
the  great  lines  of  trade  did  not  fall,  there  the 
horseman  was  master — or  the  clerkly  man  behind 
the  horseman.  Such  a  land  was  aristocratic  and 
tended  to  form  castes.  The  craftsman  sheltered 
under  a  patron,  and  in  guilds  in  a  walled  town, 
and  the  laborer  was  a  serf.  He  was  ruled  over  by 
his  knight  or  by  his  creditor — in  the  end  it  matters 
little  how  the  gentleman  began.  But  where  the 
land  became  difficult  by  reason  of  mountain  or 
forest,  or  where  water  greatly  intersected  it,  the 
pikeman  or  closer  -  fighting  swordsman  or  the 
bowman  could  hold  his  own,  and  a  democratic 
flavor,  a  touch  of  repudiation,  was  in  the  aii:  In 
such  countries  as  Italy,  Greece,  the  Alps,  the 
Netherlands,  and  Great  Britain,  the  two  forces  of 
the  old  order,  the  aristocrat  and  the  common  man, 
were  in  a  state  of  unstable  equilibrium  through 
the  whole  period  of  history.     A  slight  change* 

*  Slight,    that   is,    in    comparison    with    nineteenth  -  century 
changes 

78 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL     ELEMENTS 

in  the  details  of  the  conflict  for  existence  could 
tilt  the  balance.  A  weapon  a  little  better  adapted 
to  one  class  than  the  other,  or  a  slight  widening 
of  the  educational  gap,  worked  out  into  historically 
imposing  results,  to  dynastic  changes,  class  revo- 
lutions, and  the  passing  of  empires. 

Throughout  it  was  essentially  one  phase  of 
human  organization.  When  one  comes  to  ex- 
amine the  final  result,  it  is  astonishing  to  remark 
the  small  amount  of  essential  change,  of  positively 
final  and  irreparable  alteration,  in  the  conditions 
of  the  common  life.  Consider,  for  example,  how 
entirely  in  sympathy  was  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century  with  the  epoch  of  Horace,  and  how  closely 
equivalent  were  the  various  social  aspects  of  the 
two  periods.  The  literature  of  Rome  was  living 
reading  in  a  sense  that  has  suddenly  passed  away, 
it  fitted  all  occasions,  it  conflicted  with  no  essential 
facts  in  life.  It  was  a  commonplace  of  the  thought 
of  that  time  that  all  things  recurred,  all  things 
circled  back  to  their  former  seasons;  there  was 
nothing  new  under  the  sun.  But  now  almost 
suddenly  the  circling  has  ceased,  and  we  find 
ourselves  breaking  away.  Correlated  with  the 
sudden  development  of  mechanical  forces  that 
first  began  to  be  socially  perceptible  in  the  middle 
eighteenth  centurj^  has  been  the  appearance  of 
great  masses  of  population,  having  quite  novel 
fimctions  and  relations  in  ihe  social  body,  and 
together  with  this  appearance  such  a  suppression, 

79 


ANTICIPATIONS 

curtailment,  and  modification  of  the  older  classes 
as  to  point  to  an  entire  disintegration  of  that  sys- 
tem. The  facies  of  the  social  fabric  has  changed, 
and — as  I  hope  to  make  clear — is  still  changing 
in  a  direction  from  which,  without  a  total  destruc- 
tion and  rebirth  of  that  fabric,  there  can  never  be 
any  return. 

The  mOvSt  striking  of  the  new  classes  to  emerge 
is  certainly  the  share-holding  class,  the  owners  of 
a  sort  of  property  new  in  the  world's  history. 

Before  the  eighteenth  century  the  only  property 
of  serious  importance  consisted  of  land  and  build- 
ings. These  were  "real"  estate.  Beyond  these 
things  were  live-stock,  serfs,  and  the  furnishings 
of  real  estate,  the  surface  aspect  of  real  estate, 
so  to  speak,  personal  property,  ships,  weapons, 
and  the  Semitic  invention  of  money.  All  such 
property  had  to  be  actually  "  held  "  and  administer- 
ed by  the  owner ;  he  was  immediately  in  connection 
with  it  and  responsible  for  it.  He  could  leave  it 
only  precariously  to  a  steward  and  manager,  and 
to  convey  the  revenue  of  it  to  him  at  a  distance 
was  a  difficult  and  costly  proceeding.  To  prevent 
a  constant  social  disturbance  by  lapsing  and 
dividing  property,  and  in  the  absence  of  any  or- 
ganized agency  to  receive  lapsed  property,  in- 
heritance, and  preferably  primogeniture,  were  of 
such  manifest  advantage  that  the  old  social  or- 
ganization always  tended  in  the  direction  of  these, 
institutions.     Such  usury  as  was  practised  relied 

80 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

entirely  on  the  land  and  the  anticipated  agricult- 
ural produce  of  the  land. 

But  the  usury  and  the  sleeping  partnerships 
of  the  joint  -  stock  -  company  system  which  took 
shape  in  the  eighteenth  and  the  earlier  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  opened  quite  unprecedented 
uses  for  money,  and  created  a  practically  new 
sort  of  property  and  a  new  proprietor  class.  The 
peculiar  novelty  of  this  property  is  easily  defined. 
Given  a  sufficient  sentiment  of  public  honesty, 
share  property  is  property  that  can  be  owned  at 
any  distance  and  that  yields  its  revenue  without 
thought  or  care  on  the  part  of  its  proprietor;  it  is, 
indeed,  absolutely  irresponsible,  property,  a  thing 
that  no  old-world  property  ever  was.  But,  in 
spite  of  its  widely  different  nature,  the  laws  of 
inheritance  that  the  social  necessities  of  the  old 
order  of  things  established  have  been  applied  to 
this  new  species  of  possession  without  remark. 
It  is  indestructible,  imperishable  wealth,  subject 
only  to  the  mutations  of  value  that  economic 
changes  bring  about.  Related  in  its  character 
of  absolute  irresponsibility  to  this  share-holding 
class  is  a  kindred  class  that  has  grown  with  the 
growth  of  the  great  towns,  the  people  who  live 
upon  ground  -  rents.  There  is  every  indication 
that  this  element  of  irresponsible,  independent, 
and  wealthy  people  in  the  social  body,  people 
who  feel  the  urgency  of  no  exertion,  the  pressure 
of  no  specific  positive  duties,  is  still  on  the  increase, 
6  8i 


ANTICIPATIONS 

and  may  still  for  a  long  time  increasingly  pre- 
ponderate. It  overshadows  the  responsible  owner 
of  real  property  or  of  real  businesses  altogether. 
And  most  of  the  old  aristocrats,  the  old  knightly 
and  land-holding  people,  have,  so  to  speak,  con- 
verted themselves  into  members  of  this  new  class. 
It  is  a  class  with  scarcely  any  specific  charac- 
teristics beyond  its  defining  one,  of  the  possession 
of  property  and  all  the  potentialities  property 
entails  with  a  total  lack  of  function  with  regard 
to  that  property.  It  is  not  even  collected  into  a 
distinct  mass.  It  graduates  insensibly  into  every 
other  class,  it  permeates  society  as  tlireads  and 
veins  of  gold  permeate  quartz.  It  includes  the 
millionaire  snob,  the  political  -  minded  plutocrat, 
the  wealthy  sensualist,  open-handed  religious 
fanatics,  the  "charitable,"  the  smart,  the  magnif- 
icently dull,  the  great  army  of  timid  creatures 
who  tremble  through  life  on  a  safe  bare  sufficiency,* 
travellers,  hunters,  minor  poets,  sporting  en- 
thusiasts, many  of  the  officers  in  the  British  army, 
and  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  amateurs.  In  a 
sense  it  includes  several  modern  royalties,  for 
the  crown  in  several  modern  constitutional  states 
is  a  corporation  sole  and  the  monarch  the  unique, 
milimited,  and,  so  far  as  necessity  goes,  quite 
functionless  share-holder.  He  may  be  a  heavy- 
eyed  sensualist,  a  small-minded  leader  of  fashion, 

*  It  included,  one  remembers,  Schopenhauer,  but,  as  he  re- 
marked upon  occasion,  not  Hegel. 

82 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

a  rival  to  his  servants  in  the  gay  science  of  etiquette, 
a  frequenter  of  race -courses  and  music-halls,  a 
literary  or  scientific  quack,  a  devotee,  an  amateur 
anything — the  point  is  that  his  income  and  sus- 
tenance have  no  relation  whatever  to  his  activities. 
If  he  fancies  it,  or  is  urged  to  it  by  those  who  have 
influence  over  him,  he  may  even  "be  a  king!" 
But  that  is  not  compulsory,  not  essential,  and 
there  are  practically  no  conditional  restrictions 
whatever  laid  upon  him. 

Those  who  belong  to  this  share-holding  class 
only  partially,  who  partially  depend  upon  dividends 
and  partially  upon  activities,  occur  in  every  rank 
and  order  of  the  whole  social  body.  The  waiter 
one  tips  probably  has  a  hundred  or  so  in  some 
remote  company,  the  will  of  the  eminent  labor 
reformer  reveals  an  admirably  distributed  series 
of  investments,  the  bishop  sells  tea  and  digs  coal, 
or,  at  any  rate,  gets  a  profit  from  some  unknown 
persons  tea-selling  or  coal-digging,  to  eke  out  the 
direct  recompense  of  his  own  modest  corn-tread- 
ing. Indeed,  above  the  laboring  class,  the  number 
of  individuals  in  the  social  body  whose  gross  in- 
come is  entirely  the  result  of  their  social  activities 
is  very  small.  Previously  in  the  world's  history, 
saving  a  few  quite  exceptional  aspects,  the  pos- 
session and  retention  of  property  was  conditional 
upon  activities  of  some  sort,  honest  or  dishonest, 
work,  force,  or  fraud.  But  the  share  -  holding 
ingredient  of  our  new  society,  so  far  as  its  share- 

83 


ANTICIPATIONS 

holding  goes,  has  no  need  of  strength  or  wisdom; 
the  countless  untraceable  owner  of  the  modem 
world  presents  in  a  multitudinous  form  the  image 
of  a  Merovingian  king.  The  share-holder  owns 
the  world  de  jure,  by  the  common  recognition 
of  the  rights  of  property;  and  the  incumbency 
of  knowledge,  management,  and  toil  fall  entirely 
to  others.  He  toils  not,  neither  does  he  spin; 
he  is  mechanically  released  from  the  penalty  of 
the  Fall;  he  reaps  in  a  still  sinful  world  all  the 
practical  benefits  of  a  millennium — without  any 
of  its  moral  limitations. 

It  will  be  well  to  glance  at  certain  considerations 
which  point  to  the  by  no  means  self-evident  prop- 
osition, that  this  factor  of  irresponsible  property 
is  certain  to  be  present  in  the  social  body  a  hun- 
dred years  ahead.  It  has  no  doubt  occurred  to 
the  reader  that  all  the  conditions  of  the  share- 
holder's being  unfit  him  for  co-operative  action 
in  defence  of  the  interests  of  his  class.  Since 
share-holders  do  nothing  in  common,  except  receive 
and  hope  for  dividends,  since  they  may  be  of  any 
class,  any  culture,  any  disposition,  or  any  level 
of  capacity,  since  there  is  nothing  to  make  them 
read  the  same  papers,  gather  in  the  same  places, 
or  feel  any  sort  of  sympathy  with  each  other  be- 
yond the  universal  sympathy  of  man  for  man, 
they  will,  one  may  anticipate,  be  incapable  of 
any  concerted  action  to  defend  the  income  they 
draw  from  society  against  any  resolute  attack. 

84 


DEVELOPING     SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

Such  crude  and  obvious  denials  of  the  essential 
principles  of  their  existence  as  the  various  socialis- 
tic bodies  have  proclaimed  have  no  doubt  encoun- 
tered a  vast,  unorganized,  negative  opposition  from 
them,  but  the  subtle  and  varied  attack  of  natural 
forces  they  have  neither  the  collective  intelligence 
to  recognize  nor  the  natural  organization  to  resist. 
The  share-holding  body  is  altogether  too  chaotic 
and  diffused  for  positive  defence.  And  the  ques- 
tion of  the  prolonged  existence  of  this  compara- 
tively new  social  phenomenon,  either  in  its  present 
or  some  modified  form,  turns,  therefore,  entirely 
on  the  quasi-natural  laws  of  the  social  body.  If 
they  favor  it,  it  will  survive;  when  thej''  do  not, 
it  will  vanish  as  the  mists  of  the  morning  before 
the  sun. 

Neglecting  a  few  exceptional  older  corporations 
which,  indeed,  in  their  essence  are  not  usurious 
but  of  unlimited  liability,  the  share-holding  body 
appeared  first,  in  its  present  character,  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  came  to  its  full  develop- 
ment in  the  mid-nineteenth.  Was  its  appearance 
then  due  only  to  the  attainment  of  a  certain  neces- 
sary degree  of  public  credit,  or  was  it  correlated 
with  any  other  force?  It  seems  in  accordance 
with  facts  to  relate  it  to  another  force,  the  develop- 
ment of  mechanism,  so  far  as  certain  representa- 
tive aspects  go.  Hitherto  the  only  borrower  had 
been  the  farmer,  then  the  exploring  trader  had 
found  a  world  too  wide  for  purely  individual  effort, 

85 


ANTICIPATIONS 

and  then  suddenly  the  craftsmen  of  all  sorts,  and 
the  carriers  discovered  the  need  of  the  new,  great, 
wholesale,  initially  expensive  appliances  that  in- 
vention was  offering  them.  It  was  the  develop- 
ment of  mechanism  that  created  the  great  bulk 
of  modern  share-holding ;  it  took  its  present  shape 
distinctively  only  with  the  appearance  of  the 
railways.  The  hitherto  necessary  but  subor- 
dinate craftsman  and  merchant  classes  were  to 
have  new  weapons,  new  powers;  the^'^  were  to 
develop  to  a  new  importance,  to  a  preponderance 
even  in  the  social  body.  But  before  they  could 
attain  these  weapons,  before  this  new  and  novel 
wealth  could  be  set  up,  it  had  to  pay  its  footing 
in  an  apportioned  world,  it  had  to  buy  its  right  to 
disturb  the  established  social  order.  The  dividend 
of  the  share-holder  was  the  tribute  the  new  enter- 
prise had  to  pay  the  old  wealth.  The  share  was 
the  manumission  money  of  machinery.  And  es- 
sentially the  share-holder  represents,  and  will  con- 
tinue to  represent,  the  responsible  managing  owner 
of  a  former  state  of  affairs  in  process  of  super- 
session. 

If  the  great  material  developments  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  had  been  final ;  if  they  had,  indeed, 
constituted  merely  a  revolution  and  not  an  ab- 
solute release  from  the  fixed  conditions  about 
which  human  affairs  circled,  we  might  even  now 
be  settling  accounts  with  our  Merovingians  as 
the    socialists    desire.     But    these    developments 

86 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

were  not  final,  and  one  sees  no  hint  as  yet  of  any 
coming  finality.  Invention  runs  free  and  our 
state  is  under  its  dominion.  The  novel  is  con- 
tinually struggling  to  establish  itself  at  the  rel- 
ative or  absolute  expense  of  the  old.  The  states- 
man's conception  of  social  organization  is  no 
longer  stability,  but  growth.  And  so  long  as  ma- 
terial progress  continues  this  tribute  must  con- 
tinue to  be  paid ;  so  long  as  the  stream  of  develop- 
ment flows,  this  necessary  back  eddy  will  endure. 
Even  if  we  "municipalize"  all  sorts  of  under- 
takings we  shall  not  alter  the  essential  facts;  we 
shall  only  substitute  for  the  share-holder  the  cor- 
poration stock-holder.  The  figure  of  an  eddy  is 
particularly  appropriate.  Enterprises  will  come 
and  go,  the  relative  values  of  kinds  of  wealth  will 
alter,  old  appliances,  old  companies,  will  serve 
their  time  and  fall  in  value,  individuals  will  waste 
their  substance,  individual  families  and  groups 
will  die  out,  certain  portions  of  the  share  property 
of  the  world  may  be  gathered,  by  elaborate  manip- 
ulation, into  a  more  or  less  limited  number  of 
hands,  conceivably  even  families  and  groups  will 
be  taxed  out  by  graduated  legacy  duties  and 
specially  apportioned  income  taxes;  but,  for  all 
such  possible  changes  and  modifications,  the 
share-holding  element  will  still  endure  so  long 
as  our  present  progressive  and  experimental  state 
of  society  obtains.  And  the  very  diversity,  laxity, 
and  weakness  of  the  general  share-holding  ele- 

87 


ANTICIPATIONS 

ment,  which  will  work  to  prevent  its  organizing' 
itself  in  the  interests  of  its  property,  or  of  evolving 
any  distinctive  traditions  or  positive  characters, 
will  obviously  prevent  its  obstructing  the  contin- 
ual appearance  of  new  enterprises,  of  new  share- 
holders to  replace  the  loss  of  its  older  constituents. 
At  the  opposite  pole  of  the  social  scale  to  that 
about  which  share  -  holding  is  most  apparent  is 
a  second  necessary  and  quite  inevitable  conse- 
quence of  the  sudden  transition  that  has  occurred 
from  a  very  nearly  static  social  organization  to  a 
violently  progressive  one.  This  second  conse- 
quence of  progress  is  the  appearance  of  a  great 
number  of  people  without  either  property  or  any 
evident  function  in  the  social  organism.  This 
new  ingredient  is  most  apparent  in  the  towns; 
it  is  frequently  spoken  of  as  the  urban  poor,  but 
its  characteristic  traits  are  to  be  found  also  in  the 
rural  districts.  For  the  most  part  its  individuals 
are  either  criminal,  immoral,  parasitic  in  more 
or  less  irregular  ways  upon  the  more  successful 
classes,  or  laboring,  at  something  less  than  a 
regular  bare  subsistence  wage,  in  a  finally  hope- 
less competition  against  machinery  that  is  as 
yet  not  so  cheap  as  their  toil.  It  is,  to  borrow  a 
popular  phrase,  the  "submerged"  portion  of  the 
social  body,  a  leaderless,  aimless  multitude,  a 
multitude  of  people  drifting  down  towards  the 
abyss.  Essentially  it  consists  of  people  who 
have  failed  to  "catch  on"  to  the  altered  neces- 

88 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

sities  the  development  of  mechanism  has  brought 
about ;  they  are  people  thrown  out  of  employment 
by  machinery,  thrown  out  of  employment  by  the 
escape  of  industries  along  some  newly  opened 
line  of  communication  to  some  remote  part  of  the 
world,  or  born  under  circumstances  that  give 
them  no  opportunity  of  entering  the  world  of  ac- 
tive work.  Into  this  welter  of  machine-superseded 
toil  there  topples  the  non-adaptable  residue  of 
every  changing  trade;  its  members  marry  and 
are  given  in  marriage,  and  it  is  recruited  by  the 
spendthrifts,  weaklings,  and  failures  of  every 
superior  class. 

Since  this  class  was  not  apparent  in  masses 
in  the  relatively  static,  relatively  less  eliminatory, 
society  of  former  times,  its  appearance  has  given 
rise  to  a  belief  that  the  least  desirable  section  of 
the  community  has  become  unprecedentedly  pro- 
lific, that  there  is  now  going  on  a  "rapid  multipli- 
cation of  the  unfit."  But  sooner  or  later,  as  every 
East -End  doctor  knows,  the  ways  of  the  social 
abyss  lead  to  death,  the  premature  death  of  the 
individual,  or  death  through  the  death  or  infertil- 
ity of  the  individual's  stunted  offspring,  or  death 
through  that  extinction  which  moral  perversion 
involves.  It  is  a  recruited  class,  not  a  breeding 
multitude.  Whatever  expedients  may  be  resort- 
ed to  to  mitigate  or  conceal  the  essential  nature 
of  this  social  element,  it  remains  in  its  essence, 
wherever  social  progress  is  being  made,  the  con- 

89 


ANTICIPATIONS 

tingent  of  death.  Humanity  has  set  out  in  the 
direction  of  a  more  complex  and  exacting  organi- 
zation, and  until,  by  a  foresight  -to  me  at  least 
inconceivable,  it  can  prevent  the  birth  of  just  all 
the  inadaptable,  useless,  or  merely  unnecessary 
creatures  in  each  generation,  there  must  needs 
continue  to  be,  in  greater  or  less  amount,  this 
individually  futile  struggle  beneath  the  feet  of 
the  race;  somewhere  and  in  some  form  there  must 
still  persist  those  essentials  that  now  take  shape 
as  the  slum,  the  prison,  and  the  asylum.  All  over 
the  world,  as  the  railway  network  has  spread,  in 
Chicago  and  New  York  as  vividly  as  in  London  or 
Paris,  the  commencement  of  the  new  movement 
has  been  marked  at  once  by  the  appearance  of 
this  bulky,  irremovable  excretion,  the  appearance 
of  these  gall-stones  of  vicious,  helpless,  and  pauper 
masses.  There  seems  every  reason  to  suppose 
that  this  phenomenon  of  unemployed  citizens  who 
are,  in  fact,  unemployable,  will  remain  present 
as  a  class,  perishing  individually  and  individually 
renewed,  so  long  as  civilization  remains  progres- 
sive and  experimental  upon  its  present  lines. 
Their  drowning  existences  may  be  utilized,  the 
crude  hardship  of  their  lot  may  be  concealed  or 
mitigated,*  they  may  react  upon  the  social  fabric 

*A  very  important  factor  in  this  mitigation,  a  factor  over 
which  the  humanely  minded  cannot  too  greatly  rejoice,  will 
be  the  philanthropic  amusements  of  the  irresponsible  wealthy. 
There  is  a  growing  class  of  energetic  people — organizers,  secre- 
taries, preachers — who  cater  to  the  philanthropic  instinct,  and 

90 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

that  is  attempting  to  eliminate  them,  in  very  as- 
tounding ways,  but  their  presence  and  their  in- 
dividual doom,  it  seems  to  me,  will  be  unavoidable 
— at  any  rate,  for  many  generations  of  men.  They 
are  an  integral  part  of  this  physiological  process 
of  mechanical  progress,  as  inevitable  in  the  social 
body  as  are  waste  matters  and  disintegrating  cells 
in  the  body  of  an  active  and  health}?^  man. 

The  appearance  of  these  two  strange  function- 
less  elements,  although  the  most  striking  symp- 
tom of  the  new  phase  of  progressive  mechanical 
civilization  now  beginning,  is  by  no  means  the 
most  essential  change  in  progress.  These  ap- 
pearances involve  also  certain  disappearances. 
I  have  already  indicated  pretty  clearly  that  the 
vast  irregular  development  of  irresponsible  wealthy 
people  is  swallowing  up  and  assimilating  more 
and  more  the  old  class  of  administrative  land- 
owning gentlemen  in  all  their  grades  and  degrees. 
The  old  upper  class,  as  a  functional  member  of 
the  state,  is  being  effaced.  And  I  have  also  sug- 
gested that  the  old  lower  class,  the  broad,  necessary 
base  of  the  social  pyramid,   the  uneducated,  in- 

who  are,  for  all  practical  purposes,  employing  a  large  and  in- 
creasing section  of  suitable  helpless  people  in  supplying  to 
their  customers,  by  means  of  religious  acquiescence  and  light 
moral  reforms,  that  sense  of  well-doing  which  is  one  of  the  least 
objectionable  of  the  functionless  pleasures  of  life.  The  attempts 
to  reinstate  these  failures  by  means  of  subsidized  industries 
will,  in  the  end,  of  course,  merely  serve  to  throw  out  of  employ- 
ment other  just  subsisting  strugglers ;  it  will  probably  make 
little  or  no  difiference  in  the  net  result  of  the  process. 

91 


ANTICIPATIONS 

adaptable  peasants  and  laborers,  is,  with  the 
development  of  toil-saving  machinery,  dwindling 
and  crumbling  down  bit  by  bit  towards  the  abyss. 
But  side  by  side  with  these  two  processes  is  a 
third  process  of  still  profounder  significance,  and 
that  is  the  reconstruction  and  the  vast  proliferation 
of  what  constituted  the  middle  class  of  the  old 
order.  It  is  now,  indeed,  no  longer  a  middle  class 
at  all.  Rather  all  the  definite  classes  in  the  old 
scheme  of  functional  precedence  have  melted 
and  mingled,*  and  in  the  molten  mass  there  has 
appeared  a  vast,  intricate  confusion  of  different 
sorts  of  people,  some  sailing  about  upon  floating 
masses  of  irresponsible  property,  some  buoyed 
by  smaller  fragments,  some  clinging  desperately 
enough  to  insignificant  atoms,  a  great  and  varied 
multitude  swimming  successfully  without  aid,  or 
with  an  amount  of  aid  that  is  negligible  in  rela- 
tion to  their  own  efforts,  and  an  equally  varied 
multitude  of  less  capable  ones  clinging  to  the 
swimmers,  clinging  to  the  floating  rich,  or  clutch- 
ing empty-handed  and  thrust  and  sinking  down. 
This  is  the  typical  aspect  of  the  modern  com- 
munity. It  will  serve  as  a  general  description  of 
either  the  United  States  or  any  Western  European 
state,  and  the  day  is  not  far  distant  when  the 
extension  of  means  of  communication,  and  of  the 
share-holding  method  of  conducting  affairs,  will 
make  it  applicable   to   the   whole  world.     Save, 

*  I  reserve  any  consideration  of  the  special  case  of  the  "priest." 

92 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

possibly,  in  a  few  islands  and  inaccessible  places, 
and  regardless  of  color  or  creed,  this  process  of 
deliquescence  seems  destined  to  spread.  In  a 
great  diversity  of  tongues,  in  the  phases  of  a  num- 
ber of  conflicting  moral  and  theological  traditions, 
in  the  varying  tones  of  contrasting  racial  tem- 
peraments, the  grandchildren  of  black  and  white, 
and  red  and  brown,  will  be  seeking  more  or  less 
consciously  to  express  themselves  in  relation  to 
these  new  and  unusual  social  conditions.  But 
the  change  itself  is  no  longer  amenable  to  their 
interpretations ;  the  world-wide  spreading  of  swift 
communication,  the  obliteration  of  town  and  coun- 
try, the  deliquescence  of  the  local  social  order, 
have  an  air  of  being  processes  as  uncontrollable 
by  such  collective  intelligence  as  man  can  at  pres- 
ent command,  and  as  indifferent  to  his  local  pecu- 
liarities and  prejudices  as  the  movements  of  winds 
and  tides.. 

It  will  be  obvious  that  the  interest  of  this  specu- 
lation, at  any  rate,  centres  upon  this  great  inter- 
mediate mass  of  people  who  are  neither  passive- 
ly wealthy,  the  sleeping  partners  of  change,  nor 
helplessly  thrust  out  of  the  process.  Indeed, 
from  our  point  of  view — an  inquiry  into  coming 
things — these  non-effective  masses  would  have 
but  the  slightest  interest  were  it  not  for  their  enor- 
mous possibilities  of  reaction  upon  the  really  living 
portion  of  the  social  organism.  This  really  living 
portion  seems  at  first  sight  to  be  as  deliquescent 

93 


ANTICIPATIONS 

in  its  nature,  to  be  drifting  down  to  as  chaotic  a 
structure  as  either  the  non-functional  owners  that 
float  above  it  or  the  unemployed -who  sink  below. 
What  were  once  the  definite  subdivisions  of  the 
middle  class  modify  and  lose  their  boundaries.  The 
retail  tradesman  of  the  towns,  for  example — once 
a  fairly  homogeneous  class  throughout  Europe 
— expands  here  into  vast  store  companies,  and 
dwindles  there  to  be  an  agent  or  collector,  seeks 
employment  or  topples  outright  into  the  abyss. 
But  under  a  certain  scrutiny  one  can  detect  here 
what  we  do  not  detect  in  our  other  two  elements, 
and  that  is,  that,  going  on  side  by  side  with  the 
processes  of  dissolution,  and  frequently  masked 
by  these,  there  are  other  processes  by  which  men, 
often  of  the  most  diverse  parentage  and  antecedent 
traditions,  are  being  segregated  into  a  multitude 
of  specific  new  groups  which  may  presently  develop 
very  distinctive  characters  and  ideals. 

There  are,  for  example,  the  unorganized  myriads 
that  one  can  cover  by  the  phrase  "  mechanics  and 
engineers,"  if  one  uses  it  in  its  widest  possible 
sense.  At  present  it  would  be  almost  impossible 
to  describe  such  a  thing  as  a  typical  engineer, 
to  predicate  any  universally  applicable  charac- 
teristic of  the  engineer  and  mechanic.  The  black- 
faced,  oily  man  one  figures  emerging  from  the 
engine-room  serves  well  enough  until  one  recalls 
the  sanitary  engineer  with  his  additions  of  crockery 
and  plumbing,   the  electrical  engineer  with  his 

94 


DEVELOPING     SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

little  tests  and  wires,  the  mining  engineer,  the 
railway-maker,  the  motor-builder,  and  the  irriga- 
tion expert.  Even  if  we  take  some  specific  branch 
of  all  this  huge  mass  of  new  employment  the 
coming  of  mechanism  has  brought  with  it,  we  still 
find  an  undigested  miscellany.  Consider  the  rude 
levy  that  is  engaged  in  supplying  and  repairing 
the  world's  new  need  of  bicycles!  Wheelwrights, 
watchmakers,  blacksmiths,  music-dealers,  drapers, 
sewing-machine  repairers,  smart  errand  boys, 
ironmongers,  individuals  from  all  the  older  aspects 
of  engineering,  have  been  caught  up  by  the  new 
development,  are  all  now,  with  a  more  or  less  in- 
adequate knowledge  and  training,  working  in 
the  new  service.  But  is  it  likely  that  this  will 
remain  a  rude  levy?  From  all  these  varied  people 
the  world  requires  certain  things,  and  a  failure 
to  obtain  them  involves,  sooner  or  later,  in  this 
competitive  creation,  an  individual  replacement 
and  a  push  towards  the  abyss.  The  very  lowest 
of  them  must  understand  the  machine  they  con- 
tribute to  make  and  repair,  and  not  only  is  it  a 
fairly  complex  machine  in  itself,  but  it  is  found 
in  several  types  and  patterns,  and  so  far  it  has 
altered,  and  promises  still  to  alter,  steadily,  by 
improvements  in  this  part  and  that.  No  limited 
stock-in-trade  of  knowledge,  such  as  suffices 
for  a  joiner  or  an  ostler  will  serve.  They  must 
keep  on  mastering  new  points,  new  aspects;  they 
must   be   intelligent   and   adaptable;    they  must 

95 


ANTICIPATIONS 

get  a  grasp  of  that  permanent  something  that  lies 
behind  the  changing  immediate  practice.  In  other 
words,  they  will  have  to  be  educated  rather  than 
trained  after  the  fashion  of  the  old  craftsman. 
Just  now  this  body  of  irregulars  is  threatened 
by  the  coming  of  the  motors.  The  motors  promise 
new  difficulties,  new  rewards,  and  new  competition. 
It  is  an  ill  look-out  for  the  cycle  mechanic  who  is 
not  prepared  to  tackle  the  new  problems  that  will 
arise.  For  all  this  next  century  this  particular 
body  of  mechanics  will  be  picking  up  new  recruits 
and  eliminating  the  incompetent  and  the  rule-of- 
thumb  sage.  Can  it  fail,  as  the  j^ears  pass,  to 
develop  certain  general  characters,  to  become  so 
far  homogeneous  as  to  be  generally  conscious  of 
the  need  of  a  scientific  education,  at  any  rate  in 
mechanical  and  chemical  matters,  and  to  possess, 
down  to  its  very  lowest  ranks  and  orders,  a  com- 
mon fund  of  intellectual  training? 

But  the  makers  and  repairers  of  cycles,  and  that 
larger  multitude  that  will  presently  be  concerned 
with  motors,  are,  after  all,  only  a  small  and  special- 
ized section  of  the  general  body  of  mechanics 
and  engineers.  Every  year,  with  the  advance  of 
invention,  new  branches  of  activity,  that  change 
in  their  nature  and  methods  all  too  rapidly  for 
the  establishment  of  rote  and  routine  workers 
of  the  old  type,  call  together  fresh  levies  of  ama- 
teurish workers  and  learners  who  must  surely 
presently  develop  into,   or  give  place  to,   bodies 

96 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL     ELEMENTS 

of  qualified  and  capable  men.  And  the  point 
I  would  particularly  insist  upon  here  is,  that 
throughout  all  its  ranks  and  ramifications,  from 
the  organizing  heads  of  great  undertakings  down 
to  the  assistant  in  the  local  repair  shop,  this 
new,  great  and  expanding  body  of  mechanics  and 
engineers  will  tend  to  become  an  educated  and 
adaptable  class  in  a  sense  that  the  craftsmen  of 
former  times  were  not  educated  and  adaptable. 
Just  how  high  the  scientific  and  practical  educa- 
tion may  rise  in  the  central  levels  of  this  body  is  a 
matter  for  subsequent  speculation ;  just  how  much 
initiative  will  be  found  in  the  lowest  ranks  de- 
pends upon  many  very  complex  considerations. 
But  that  here  we  have  at  least  the  possibility,  the 
primary  creative  conditions  of  a  new,  numerous, 
intelligent,  educated,  and  capable  social  element  is, 
I  think,  a  proposition  with  which  the  reader  will 
agree. 

What  are  the  chief  obstacles  in  the  way  of  the 
emergence,  from  out  the  present  chaos,  of  this 
social  element,  equipped,  organized,  educated,  con- 
scious of  itself  and  of  distinctive  aims,  in  the  next 
himdred  years?  In  the  first  place,  there  is  the 
spirit  of  trade-unionism,  the  conservative  conta- 
gion of  the  old  craftsmanship.  Trade -unions 
arose  under  the  tradition  of  the  old  order,  when 
in  every  business  employer  and  employed  stood 
in  marked  antagonism,  stood  as  a  special  instance 
of  the  universal  relationship  of  gentle  or  intelli- 
7  97 


ANTICIPATIONS 

gent,  who  supplied  no  labor,  and  simple,  who  sup- 
plied nothing  else.  The  interest  of  the  employer 
was  to  get  as  much  labor  as  possible  out  of  his 
hirelings;  the  complementary  object  in  life  of  the 
hireling,  whose  sole  function  was  drudgery,  who 
had  no  other  prospect  until  death,  was  to  give  as 
little  to  his  employer  as  possible.  In  order  to 
keep  the  necessary  laborer  submissive,  it  was  a 
matter  of  public  policy  to  keep  him  uneducated 
and  as  near  the  condition  of  a  beast  of  burden  as 
possible;  and  in  order  to  keep  his  life  tolerable 
against  that  natural  increase  which  all  the  moral 
institutions  of  his  state  promoted,  the  laborer — 
stimulated  if  his  efforts  slackened  by  the  touch 
of  absolute  misery  —  was  forced  to  devise  elabo- 
rate rules  for  restricting  the  hours  of  toil,  making 
its  performance  needlessly  complex,  and  shirking 
with  extreme  ingenuity  and  conscientiousness.  In 
the  older  trades,  of  which  the  building  trade  is 
foremost,  these  two  traditions,  reinforced  by  un- 
imaginative building  regulations,  have  practi- 
cally  arrested    any    advance    whatever.*     There 

*  I  find  it  incredible  that  there  will  not  be  a  sweeping  revolution 
in  the  methods  of  building  during  the  next  century.  The  erection 
of  a  house-wall,  come  to  think  of  it,  is  an  astonishingly  tedious 
and  complex  business ;  the  final  result  exceedingly  unsatis- 
factory. It  has  been  my  lot  recently  to  follow  in  detail  the  process 
of  building  a  private  dwelling-hoiise,  and  the  solemn  succes- 
sion of  deliberate,  respectable,  perfectly  satisfied  men  who  have 
contributed  each  so  many  days  of  his  life  to  this  accumulation 
of  weak  compromises,  has  enormously  intensified  my  constitu- 
tional amazement  at  my  fellow-creatures.     The  chief  ii:\^redient 

98 


DEVELOPING     SOCIAL     ELEMENTS 

can  be  no  doubt  that  this  influence  has  spread  into 
what  are  practically  new  branches  of  work.  Even 
where  new  conveniences  have  called  for  new  types 
of  workmen  and  have  opened  the  way  for  the  ele- 
vation of  a  group  of  laborers  to  the  higher  level 


in  this  particular  house-wall  is  the  common  brick,  burned  earth, 
and  but  one  step  from  the  handfuls  of  clay  of  the  ancestral  mud 
hut,  small  in  size  and  permeable  to  damp.  Slowly,  day  by  day, 
the  walls  grew  tediously  up,  to  a  melody  of  tinkling  trowels. 
These  bricks  are  joined  by  mortar,  which  is  mixed  in  small  quan- 
tities, and  must  vary  very  greatly  in  its  quality  and  properties 
throughout  the  house.  In  order  to  prevent  the  obvious  evils 
of  a  wall  of  porous  and  irregular  baked  clay  and  lime  mud,  a 
damp  course  of  tarred  felt,  which  cannot  possibly  last  more 
than  a  few  years,  was  inserted  about  a  foot  from  the  ground. 
Then  the  wall  being  quite  insufficient  to  stand  the  heavy  drift  of 
weather  to  which  it  is  exposed,  was  dabbled  over  with  two  coat- 
ings of  plaster  on  the  outside,  the  outermost  being  given  a  primi- 
tive picturesqueness  by  means  of  a  sham  surface  of  rough-cast 
pebbles  and  whitewash,  while  within,  to  conceal  the  rough  dis- 
comfort of  the  surface,  successive  coatings  of  plaster,  and  finally 
paper,  were  added,  with  a  wood-skirting  at  the  foot  thrice  painted. 
Everything  in  this  was  hand  work,  the  laying  of  the  bricks, 
the  dabbling  of  the  plaster,  the  smoothing  of  the  paper ;  it  is  a 
house  built  of  hands — and  some  I  saw  were  bleeding  hands — 
just  as  in  the  days  of  the  pyramids  when  the  only  engines  were 
living  men.  The  whole  confection  is  now  undergoing  incal- 
culable chemical  reactions  between  its  several  parts.  Lime, 
mortar,  and  microscopical  organisms  are  producing  undesigned 
chromatic  efifects  in  the  paper  and  plaster ;  the  plaster,  having 
methods  of  expansion  and  contraction  of  its  own,  crinkles  and 
cracks ;  the  skirting,  having  absorbed  moisture  and  now  drying 
again,  opens  its  joints  ;  the  rough-cast  coquettes  with  the  frost 
and  opens  chinks  and  crannies  for  the  humbler  creation.  I 
fail  to  see  the  necessity  of  (and,  accordingly,  I  resent  bitterly) 
all  these  coral-reef  methods.  Better  walls  than  this,  and  better 
and  less  life-wasting  ways  of  making  them,  are  surely  possible. 
In  the  wall  in  question,  concrete  would  have  been  cheaper  and 
better  than  bricks  if  only  "  the  men  "  had  understood  it.  But  I 
can  dream  at  last  of  much  more  revolutionary  affairs,  of  a  thing 

99 


ANTICIPATIONS 

of  versatile  educated  men,*  the  old  traditions  have 
to  a  very  large  extent  prevailed.  The  average 
sanitary  plumber  of  to-day  in  England  insists 
upon  his  position  as  a  mere  laborer  as  though  it 
were  some  precious  thing;  he  guards  himself  from 
improvement  as  a  virtuous  woman  guards  her 
honor;  he  works  for  specifically  limited  hours  and 
by  the  hour  with  specific  limitations  in  the  practice 
of  his  trade,  on  the  fairly  sound  assumption  that 
but  for  that  restriction  any  fool  might  do  plumb- 
ing as  well  as  he;  whatever  he  learns  he  learns 
from  some  other  plumber  during  his  apprentice- 
ship years  —  after  which  he  devotes  himself  to 
doing   the   minimum  of   work   in   the  maximum 

running  to  and  fro  along  a  temporary  rail,  that  will  squeeze 
out  wall  as  one  squeezes  paint  from  a  tube,  and  form  its  surface 
with  a  pat  or  two  as  it  sets.  Moreover,  I  do  not  see  at  all  why 
the  walls  of  small  dwelling-houses  should  be  so  solid  as  they  are. 
There  still  hangs  about  us  the  monumental  traditions  of  the 
pyramids.  It  ought  to  be  possible  to  build  sound,  portable, 
and  habitable  houses  of  felted  wire-netting  and  weather-proofed 
paper  upon  a  light  framework.  This  sort  of  thing  is,  no  doubt, 
abominably  ugly  at  present,  but  that  is  because  architects  and 
designers,  being  for  the  most  part  inordinately  cultured  and 
quite  uneducated,  are  unable  to  cope  with  its  fundamentally 
novel  problems.  A  few  energetic  men  might  at  any  time  set 
out  to  alter  all  this.  And  with  the  inevitable  revolutions  that 
must  come  about  in  domestic  fittings,  and  which  I  hope  to  discviss 
more  fully  in  the  next  paper,  it  is  open  to  question  whether  many 
ground  landlords  may  not  find  they  have  work  for  the  house- 
breakers rather  than  wealth  unlimited  falling  into  their  hands 
when  the  building  leases  their  solicitors  so  ingeniously  draw 
up  do  at  last  expire. 

*  The  new  aspects  of  building,  for  example,  that  have  been 
broitght  about  by  the  entrance  of  water  and  gas  into  the  house, 
and  the  application  of  water  to  sanitation. 

TOO 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

of  time  until  liivS  brief  excursion  into  this  mysterious 
universe  is  over.  So  far  from  invention  spurring 
him  onward,  every  improvement  in  sanitary  work 
in  England,  at  least,  is  limited  by  the  problem 
whether  "the  men"  will  understand  it.  A  person 
ingenious  enough  to  exceed  this  sacred  limit  might 
as  well  hang  himself  as  trouble  about  the  im- 
provement of  plumbing. 

If  England  stood  alone,  I  do  not  see  why  each 
of  the  new  mechanical  and  engineering  industries 
so  soon  as  it  develops  sufficienth^^  to  have  gathered 
together  a  body  of  workers  capable  of  supporting 
a  trade  -  union  secretary,  should  not  begin  to 
stagnate  in  the  same  manner.  Only  England 
does  not  stand  alone,  and  the  building  trade  is 
so  far  not  typical,  inasmuch  as  it  possesses  a  na- 
tional monopoly  that  the  most  elaborate  system 
of  protection  cannot  secure  any  other  group  of 
trades.  One  must  have  one's  house  built  where 
one  has  to  live;  the  importation  of  workmen  in 
small  bodies  is  difficult  and  dear,  and  if  one  cannot 
have  the  house  one  wishes,  one  must  needs  have 
the  least  offensive  substitute;  but  bicycle  and 
motor,  iron-work  and  furniture,  engines,  rails, 
and  ships,  one  can  import.  The  community,  there- 
fore, that  does  least  to  educate  its  mechanics 
and  engineers  out  of  the  base  and  servile  tradi- 
tion of  the  old  idea  of  industrj'^  will  in  the  coming 
3^ears  of  progress  simply  get  a  disproportionate 
share  of  the  rejected  element;  the  trade  will  go  else- 

lOI 


ANTICIPATIONS 

where,  and  the  community  will  be  left  in  posses- 
sion of  an  exceptionally  large  contingent  for  the 
abyss. 

At  present,  however,  I  am  dealing  not  with  the 
specific  communit5^  but  with  the  generalized  civ- 
ilized community  of  A.D.  2000 — we  disregard  the 
fate  of  states  and  empires  for  a  time — and,  for 
that  emergent  community,  wherever  it  may  be, 
it  seems  reasonable  to  anticipate,  replacing  and 
enormously  larger  and  more  important  than  the 
classes  of  common  workmen  and  mechanics  of 
to-day,  a  large,  fairly  homogeneous  body — big 
men  and  little  men,  indeed,  but  with  no  dividing 
lines — of  more  or  less  expert  mechanics  and  en- 
gineers, with  a  certain  common  minimum  of  edu- 
cation and  intelligence,  and  probably  a  common 
class  consciousness — a.  new  body,  a  new  force, 
in  the  world's  history. 

For  this  body  to  exist  implies  the  existence  of 
much  more  than  the  primary  and  initiating  nucleus 
of  engineers  and  skilled  mechanics.  If  it  is  an 
educated  class,  its  existence  implies  a  class  of 
educators,  and  just  as  far  as  it  does  get  educated 
the  schoolmasters  will  be  skilled  and  educated 
men.  The  shabby-genteel  middle -class  school- 
master of  the  England  of  to-day,  in — or  a  little 
way  out  of — orders,  with  his  smattering  of  Greek, 
his  Latin  that  leads  nowhere,  his  fatuous  mathe- 
matics, his  gross  ignorance  of  pedagogics,  and 
his  incomparable  snobbishness,  certainly  does  not 

102 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

represent  the  schoolmaster  of  this  coming  class. 
Moreover,  the  new  element  will  necessarily  embody 
its  collective,  necessarily  distinctive,  and  un- 
precedented thoughts  in  a  literature  of  its  own, 
its  development  means  the  development  of  a  new 
sort  of  writer  and  of  new  elements  in  the  press. 
And  since,  if  it  does  emerge,  a  revolution  in  the 
common  schools  of  the  community  will  be  a  neces- 
sary part  of  the  process ;  then  its  emergence  will 
involve  a  revolutionary  change  in  the  condition 
of  classes  that  might  otherwise  remain  as  they 
are  now — the  older  craftsman,  for  example. 

The  process  of  attraction  will  not  end  even  there; 
the  development  of  more  and  more  scientific  en-' 
gineering  and  of  really  adaptable  operatives  will 
render  possible  agricultural  contrivances  that 
are  now  only  dreams,  and  the  diffusion  of  this 
new  class  over  the  country -side  —  assuming  the 
reasoning  in  my  second  chapter  to  be  sound — 
will  bring  the  lever  of  the  improved  schools  under 
the  agriculturist.  The  practically  autonomous 
farm  of  the  old  epoch  will  probably  be  replaced 
by  a  great  variety  of  types  of  cultivation,  each 
with  its  labor-saving  equipment.  In  this,  as  in 
most  things,  the  future  spells  variation.  The 
practical  abolition  of  impossible  distances  over  the 
world  will  tend  to  make  every  district  specialize 
in  the  production  for  which  it  is  best  fitted,  and  to 
develop  that  production  with  an  elaborate  precision 
and  economy.     The  chief  opposing  force  to  this 

103 


ANTICIPATIONS 

tendency  will  be  found  in  those  countries  where 
the  tenure  of  the  land  is  in  small  holdings.  A 
population  of  small  agriculturists  that  has  really 
got  itself  well  established  is  probably  as  hopelessly 
immovable  a  thing  as  the  forces  of  progressive 
change  will  have  to  encounter.  The  Arcadian 
healthiness  and  simplicity  of  the  small  holder 
and  the  usefulness  of  little  hands  about  him,  natu- 
rally results  in  his  keeping  the  population  on  his 
plot  up  to  the  limit  of  bare  subsistence.  He  avoids 
over-education,  and  his  beasts  live  with  him  and 
his  children  in  a  natural,  kindly  manner.  He  will 
have  no  idlers,  and  even  grandmamma  goes  weed- 
ing. His  net  produce  is  less  than  the  production 
of  the  larger  methods,  but  his  gross  is  greater, 
and  usually  it  is  mortgaged  more  or  less.  Along 
the  selvage  of  many  of  the  new  roads  we  have 
foretold  his  hens  will  peck  and  his  children  beg, 
far  into  the  coming  decades.  This  simple,  virtuous, 
open-air  life  is  to  be  found  ripening  in  the  north  of 
France  and  Belgium;  it  culminated  in  Ireland  in 
the  famine  years;  it  has  held  its  own  in  China — 
with  a  use  of  female  infanticide — for  immemorable 
ages,  and  a  number  of  excellent  persons  are  en- 
deavoring to  establish  it  in  England  at  the  present 
time.  At  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  under  British 
rule,  Kaffirs  are  being  settled  upon  little  inalienable 
holdings  that  must  inevitably  develop  in  the  same 
direction,  and  over  the  Southern  States  the  nigger 
squats  and  multiplies.     It  is  fairly  certain  that 

104 


DEVELOPING     SOCIAL     ELEMENTS 

these  stagnant  ponds  of  population,  which  will 
go  on  stagnating  until  public  intelligence  rises 
to  the  pitch  of  draining  them  into  unwilling  but 
necessary  motion,  will  on  a  greater  scale  parallel 
in  the  twentieth  century  the  soon-to-be-dispersed 
urban  slums  of  the  nineteenth.  But  I  do  not  see 
how  they  can  obstruct,  more  than  locally,  the 
reorganization  of  agriculture  and  horticulture 
upon  the  ampler  and  more  economical  lines  mech- 
anism permits,  or  prevent  the  development  of  a 
type  of  agriculturist  as  adaptable,  alert,  intelligent, 
unprejudiced,  and  modest  as  the  coming  engineer. 
Another  great  section  of  the  community,  the 
military  element,  will  also  fall  within  the  attraction 
of  this  possible  synthesis,  and  will  inevitably 
undergo  profound  modification.  Of  the  probable 
development  of  warfare  a  later  chapter  shall  treat, 
and  here  it  will  suffice  to  point  out  that  at  present 
science  stands  proffering  the  soldier  vague,  vast 
possibilities  of  mechanism,  and,  so  far,  he  has 
accepted  practically  nothing  but  rifles  which  he 
cannot  sight  and  guns  that  he  does  not  learn  to 
move  about.  It  is  quite  possible  the  sailor  would 
be  in  the  like  case,  but  for  the  exceptional  con- 
ditions that  begot  ironclads  in  the  American  Civil 
War.  Science  offers  the  soldier  transpK)rt  that  he 
does  not  use,  maps  he  does  not  use,  intrenching 
devices,  road-making  devices,  balloons  and  flying 
scouts,  portable  foods,  security  from  disease,  a 
thousand  ways  of  organizing  the  horrible  uncer- 

105 


ANTICIPATIONS 

tainties  of  war.  But  the  soldier  of  to-day — I  do 
not  mean  the  British  soldier  only — still  insists  on 
regarding  these  revolutionary  apphances  as  mere 
accessories,  and  untrustworthy  ones  at  that,  to 
the  time-honored  practice  of  his  art.  He  guards 
his  technical  innocence  like  a  plumber. 

Every  European  army  is  organized  on  the  lines 
of  the  once  fundamental  distinction  of  the  horse- 
and-foot  epoch,  in  deference  to  the  contrast  of  gen- 
tle and  simple.  There  is  the  officer,  with  all  the 
traditions  of  old  nobility,  and  the  men,  still,  by  a 
hundred  implications,  mere  sources  of  mechani- 
cal force,  and  fundamentally  base.  The  British 
army,  for  example,  still  cherishes  the  tradition 
that  its  privates  are  absolutely  illiterate,  and  such 
small  instruction  as  is  given  them  in  the  art  of 
war  is  imparted  by  bawling  and  enforced  by  abuse 
upon  public  drill-grounds.  Almost  all  discussion 
of  military  matters  still  turns  upon  the  now  quite 
stupid  assumption  that  there  are  two  primary 
military  arms  and  no  more,  horse  and  foot. 
"Cyclists  are  infantry,"  the  War  Office  manual  of 
1900  gallantly  declares  in  the  face  of  this  changing 
imiverse.  After  fifty  years  of  railways,  there  still 
does  not  exist  in  a  world  which  is  said  to  be  over- 
devoted  to  military  affairs,  a  skilled  and  organized 
body  of  men,  specially  prepared  to  seize,  repair, 
reconstruct,  work,  and  fight  such  an  important 
element  in  the  new  social  machinery  as  a  railway 
system.     Such  a  business,  in  the  next  European 

106 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

war,  will  be  hastily  intrusted  to  some  haphazard 
incapables  drafted  from  one  or  other  of  the  two 
prehistoric  arms.  ...  I  do  not  see  how  this 
condition  of  affairs  can  be  anything  but  transitory. 
There  may  be  several  wars  between  European 
powers,  prepared  and  organized  to  accept  the 
old  conventions,  bloody,  vast,  distressful  encoun- 
ters that  may  still  leave  the  art  of  war  essentially 
unmodified,  but  sooner  of  later — it  may  be  in  the 
improvised  struggle  that  follows  the  collapse  of 
some  one  of  these  huge,  witless,  fighting  forces 
— the  new  sort  of  soldier  will  emerge,  a  sober, 
considerate,  engineering  man — no  more  of  a  gentle- 
man than  the  man  subordinated  to  him  or  any 
other  self-respecting  person. 

Certain  interesting  side  questions  I  may  glance 
at  here,  only  for  the  present,  at  least,  to  set  them 
aside  unanswered,  the  reaction,  for  example,  of 
this  probable  development  of  a  great  mass  of  edu- 
cated and  intelligent  efficients  upon  the  status  and 
quality  of  the  medical  profession,  and  the  influence 
of  its  novel  needs  in  either  modifying  the  existing 
legal  body  or  calling  into  being  a  parallel  body 
of  more  expert  and  versatile  guides  and  assistants 
in  business  operations.  But  from  the  mention 
of  this  latter  section  one  comes  to  another  possible 
centre  of  aggregation  in  the  social  welter.  Op- 
posed in  many  of  their  most  essential  conditions 
to  the  capable  men  who  are  of  primary  importance 
in  the  social  body  is  the  great  and  growing  variety 

107 


ANTICIPATIONS 

of  non-productive  but  active  men  who  are  engaged 
in  more  or  less  necessary  operations  of  organiza- 
tion, promotion,  advertisement,  and  trade.  There 
are  the  business  managers,  pubUc  and  private, 
the  poHtical  organizers,  brokers,  commission  agents, 
the  varying  grades  of  financier  down  to  the  mere 
greedy  camp-followers  of  finance,  the  gamblers 
pure  and  simple,  and  the  great  body  of  their  de- 
pendent clerks,  tj'^pe writers,  and  assistants.  All 
this  multitude  will  have  this  much  in  common, 
that  it  will  be  dealing,  not  with  the  primary,  in- 
exorable logic  of  natural  laws,  but  with  the  shift- 
ing, uncertain  prejudices  and  emotions  of  the  gen- 
eral mass  of  people.  It  will  be  wary  and  cunning 
rather  than  deliberate  and  intelligent,  smart  rather 
than  prompt,  considering  always  the  appearance 
and  effect  before  the  reality  and  possibilities  of 
things.  It  will  probably  tend  to  form  a  culture 
about  the  political  and  financial  operator  as  its 
ideal  and  central  type,  opposed  to  and  conflicting 
with  the  forces  of  attraction  that  will  tend  to  group 
the  new  social  masses  about  the  scientific  engi- 
neer.* 

Here,  then  (in  the  vision  of  the  pre.sent  writer), 
are  the  main  social  elements  of  the  coming  time: 
(i.)    the   element   of   irresponsible   property;    (ii.) 

*  The  future  of  the  servant  class  and  the  future  of  the  artist 
are  two  interesting  questions  that  will  be  most  conveniently 
mentioned  at  a  later  stage,  when  we  come  to  discuss  the  domestic 
life  in  greater  detail  than  is  possible  before  we  have  formed  any 
clear  notion  of  the  sort  of  people  who  will  lead  that  life, 

io8 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL     ELEMENTS 

the  helpless  superseded  poor,  that  broad  base  of 
mere  toilers  now  no  longer  essential;  (iii.)  a  great 
inchoate  mass  of  more  or  less  capable  people  en- 
gaged more  or  less  -consciously  in  appljang  the 
growing  body  of  scientific  knowledge  to  the  general 
needs,  a  great  mass  that  will  inevitably  tend  to 
organize  itself  in  a  system  of  interdep>endent  educat- 
ed classes  with  a  common  consciousness  and  aim, 
but  which  may  or  may  not  succeed  in  doing  so; 
and  (iv.)  a  possibly  equally  great  number  of  non- 
productive persons  living  in  and  by  the  social 
confusion. 

All  these  elements  will  be  mingled  confusedly 
together,  passing  into  one  another  by  insensible' 
gradations,  scattered  over  the  great  urban  regions 
and  intervening  areas  our  previous  anticipations 
have  sketched  out.  Moreover,  they  are  develop- 
ing, as  it  were  unconsciously,  under  the  stimulus 
of  mechanical  developments,  and  with  the  band- 
ages of  old  tradition  hampering  their  movements. 
The  laws  they  obey,  the  governments  they  live 
under  are  for  the  most  part  laws  made  and  govern- 
ments planned  before  the  coming  of  steam.  The 
areas  of  administration  are  still  areas  marked  out 
by  conditions  of  locomotion  as  obsolete  as  the 
quadrupedal  method  of  the  prearboreal  ancestor. 
In  Great  Britain,  for  example,  the  political  con- 
stitution, the  balance  of  estates,  and  the  balance  of 
parties  preserve  the  compromise  of  long-vanished 
antagonisms.     The  House  of  Lords  is  a  collection 

109 


ANTICIPATIONS 

of  obsolete  territorial  dignitaries  fitfully  reinforced 
by  the  bishops  and  a  miscellany  (in  no  sense  rep- 
resentative) of  opulent  moderns;  the  House  of 
Commons  is  the  seat  of  a  party  conflict,  a  faction 
fight  of  initiated  persons,  that  has  long  ceased  to 
bear  any  real  relation  to  current  social  processes. 
The  members  of  the  lower  chamber  are  selected  by 
obscure  party  machines  operating  upon  constit- 
uencies almost  all  of  which  have  long  since  be- 
come too  vast  and  heterogeneous  to  possess  any 
collective  intelligence  or  purpose  at  all.  In  theory 
the  House  of  Commons  guards  the  interests  of 
classes  that  are  in  fact  rapidly  disintegrating 
into  a  number  of  quite  antagonistic  and  conflicting 
elements.  The  new  mass  of  capable  men,  of  which 
the  engineers  are  typical,  these  capable  men  who 
must  necessarily  be  the  active  principle  of  the 
new  mechanically  equipped  social  body,  finds 
no  representation  save  by  accident  in  either  as- 
sembly. The  man  who  has  concerned  himself 
with  the  public  health,  with  army  organization, 
with  educational  improvement,  or  with  the  vital 
matters  of  transport  and  communication,  if  he  enter 
the  official  councils  of  the  kingdom  at  all,  must 
enter  ostensibly  as  the  guardian  of  the  interests 
of  the  free  and  independent  electors  of  a  specific 
district  that  has  long  ceased  to  have  any  sort  of 
specific  interests  at  all.*    .     .     . 

*  Even  the  physical  conditions  under  which  the  House  of 
Commons   meets  and   plays    at    government  are   ridiculously 

IIO 


DEVELOPING    SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

And  the  same  obsolescence  that  is  so  conspicu- 
ous in  the  general  institutions  of  the  official  king- 
dom of  England,  and  that  even  English  people 
can  remark  in  the  official  empire  of  China,  is  to  be 
traced  in  a  greater  or  lesser  degree  in  the  nominal 
organization  and  public  tradition  throughout  the 
whole  world.  The  United  States,  for  example, 
the  social  mass  which  has  perhaps  advanced  fur- 
thest along  the  new  lines,  struggles  in  the  iron 
bonds  of  a  constitution  that  is  based  primarily 
on  a  conception  of  a  number  of  comparatively 
small,  internally  homogeneous,  agricultural  states, 
a  bunch  of  pre- Johannesburg  Transv£ials,  com- 
municating little,  and  each  constituting  a  separate, 
autonomous  democracy  of  free  farmers — slave- 
holding  or  slaveless.     Every  country  in  the  world, 

obsolete.  Every  disputable  point  is  settled  by  a  division — a 
bell  rings,  there  is  shouting  and  running,  the  members  come 
blundering  into  the  chamber  and  sort  themselves  with  much 
loutish  shuffling  and  shoving  into  the  division  lobbies.  They 
are  counted  as  illiterate  farmers  count  sheep;  amid  much 
fuss  and  confusion  they  return  to  their  places,  and  the  tellers 
vociferate  the  result.  The  waste  of  time  over  these  antics  is 
enormous,  and  they  are  often  repeated  many  times  in  an  evening. 
For  the  lack  of  time  the  House  of  Commons  is  unable  to  perform 
the  most  urgent  and  necessary  legislative  duties — ^it  has  this 
year  hung  up  a  cryingly  necessary  Education  Bill,  a  delay 
that  will  in  the  end  cost  Great  Britain  millions — but  not  a  soul 
in  it  has  had  the  nece^ary  common-sense  to  point  out  that  an 
electrician  and  an  expert  locksmith  could  in  a  few  weeks  and 
for  a  few  hundred  pounds  devise  and  construct  a  member's  desk 
and  key,  committee-room  tapes  and  voting-desks,  and  a  general 
recording  apparatus  that  would  enable  every  member  within 
the  precincts  to  vote,  and  that  would  count,  record,  and  report 
the  votes  within  the  space  of  a  couple  of  minutes. 

Ill 


ANTICIPATIONS 

indeed,  that  Is  organized  at  all,  has  been  organized 
with  a  view  to  stability  within  territorial  limits; 
no  country  has  been  organized  with  any  foresight 
of  development  and  inevitable  change,  or  with 
the  slightest  reference  to  the  practical  revolution 
in  topography  that  the  new  means  of  transit  in- 
volve. And  since  this  is  so,  and  since  humanitj'' 
is  most  assuredly  embarked  upon  a  series  of  changes 
of  which  we  know  as  yet  only  the  opening  phases, 
a  large  part  of  the  history  of  the  coming  years 
will  certainly  record  more  or  less  conscious  endeav- 
ors to  adapt  these  obsolete  and  obsolescent  con- 
trivances for  the  management  of  public  affairs  to 
the  new  and  continually  expanding  and  chang- 
ing requirements  of  the  social  body,  to  correct 
or  overcome  the  traditions  that  were  once  wisdom 
and  which  are  now  obstruction,  and  to  burst  the 
straining  boundaries  that  were  sufficient  for  the 
ancient  states.  There  are  here  no  signs  of  a  mil- 
lennium. Internal  reconstruction,  while  men  are 
still  limited,  egotistical,  passionate,  ignorant,  and 
ignorantly  led,  means  seditions  and  revolutions, 
and  the  rectification  of  frontiers  means  wars.  Rut 
before  we  glance  at  these  conflicts  and  wars  cer- 
tain general  social  reactions  must  be  considered. 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 


WE  are  now  in  a  position  to  point  out  and 
consider  certain  general  ways  in  which 
the  various  factors  and  elements  in  the  deliquescent 
society  of  the  present  time  will  react  one  upon 
another,  and  to  speculate  what  definite  state- 
ments, if  any,  it  may  seem  reasonable  to  malie 
about  the  individual  people  of  the  year  2000 — or 
thereabouts — from  the  reaction  of  these  classes  we 
have  attempted  to  define. 

To  begin  with,  it  may  prove  convenient  to  specu- 
late upon  the  trend  of  development  of  that  class 
about  which  we  have  the  most  grounds  for  cer- 
tainty in  the  coming  time.  The  shareholding 
class,  the  rout  of  the  Abyss,  the  speculator,  may 
develop  in  countless  ways  according  to  the  vary- 
ing development  of  exterior  influences  upon  them, 
but  of  the  most  typical  portion  of  the  central  body, 
the  section  containing  the  scientific  engineering 
or  scientific  medical  sort  of  people,  we  can  postu- 
late certain  tendencies  uath  some  confidence.  Cer- 
tain ways  of  thought  they  must  develop,  certain 
habits  of  mind  and  eye  they  will  radiate  out  into 

"5 


ANTICIPATIONS 

the  adjacent  portions  of  the  social  mass.  We 
can  even,  I  think,  deduce  some  conception  of  the 
home  in  which  a  fairly  typical  example  of  this 
body  will  be  living  within  a  reasonable  term  of 
years. 

The  mere  fact  that  a  man  is  an  engineer  or  a 
doctor,  for  example,  should  imply  now,  and  certainly 
will  imply  in  the  future,  that  he  has  received  an 
education  of  a  certain  definite  type;  he  will  have 
a  general  acquaintance  with  the  scientific  inter- 
pretation of  the  universe,  and  he  will  have  ac- 
quired certain  positive  and  practical  habits  of  mind. 
If  the  methods  of  thought  of  any  individual  in 
this  central  bodj'^  are  not  practical  and  positive, 
he  will  tend  to  drift  out  of  it  to  some  more  congenial 
employment.  He  will  almost  necessarily  have  a 
strong  imperative  to  duty  quite  apart  from  what- 
ever theological  opinions  he  may  entertain,  be- 
cause if  he  has  not  such  an  inherent  imperative 
life  will  have  very  man3'^  more  alluring  prospects 
than  this.  His  religious  conclusions,  whatever 
they  may  be,  will  be  based  upon  some  orderly 
theological  system  that  must  have  honestlj?^  ad- 
mitted and  reconciled  his  scientific  beliefs;  the 
emotional  and  mystical  elements  in  his  religion 
will  be  subordinate  or  absent.  Essentially  he 
will  be  a  moral  man,  certainly  so  far  as  to  exer- 
cise self-restraint  and  live  in  an  ordered  way. 
Unless  this  is  so,  he  will  be  unable  to  give  his 
principal    energies    to    thought    and    work — that 

ii6 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

is,  he  will  not  be  a  good  typical  engineer.  If  sen- 
suality appear  at  all  largely  in  this  central 
body,  therefore — a  point  we  must  leave  open  here — 
it  will  appear  without  any  trappings  of  sentiment 
or  mysticism,  frankly  on  Pauline  lines,  wine  for 
the  stomach's  sake,  and  it  is  better  to  marry  than 
to  burn,  a  concession  to  the  flesh  necessary  to 
secure  efficiency.  Assuming  in  our  typical  case 
that  pure  indulgence  does  not  appear  or  flares  and 
passes,  then  either  he  will  be  single  or  more  or 
less  married.  The  import  of  that  "  more  or  less  " 
will  be  discussed  later;  for  the  prcvsent  we  may 
very  conveniently  conceive  him  married  under  the 
traditional  laws  of  Christendom.  Having  a  mind 
considerably  engaged,  he  will  not  have  the  leisure 
for  a  wife  of  the  distracting,  perplexing  personality 
kind,  and  in  our  typical  case,  which  will  be  a  typical- 
ly sound  and  successful  one,  we  may  picture  him 
wedded  to  a  healthy,  intelligent,  and  lo3^al  person, 
who  will  be  her  husband's  companion  in  their 
common  leisure,  and  as  mother  of  their  three  or 
four  children  and  manager  of  his  household,  as 
much  of  a  technically  capable  individual  as  him- 
self. He  will  be  a  father  of  several  children,  I 
think,  because  his  scientific  mental  basis  will 
incline  him  to  see  the  whole  of  life  as  a  struggle  to 
survive;  he  will  recognize  that  a  childless,  sterile 
life,  however  pleasant,  is  essentially  failure  and 
perversion,  and  he  will  conceive  his  honor  involved 
in  the  possession  of  offspring. 

117 


ANTICIPATIONS 

Such  a  couple  will  probably  dress  with  a  view  to 
decent  convenience ;  they  will  not  set  the  fashions, 
as  I  shall  presently  point  out,  but  they  will  incline 
to  steady  and  sober  them;  they  will  avoid  exciting 
color  contrasts  and  bizarre  contours.  They  will 
not  be  habitually  promenaders,  or  greatl}^  addicted 
to  theatrical  performances;  they  will  probably 
find  their  secondary  interests — the  cardinal  one 
will  of  course  be  the  work  in  hand — in  a  not  too 
imaginative  prose  literature,  in  travel  and  journeys 
and  in  the  less  sensuous  aspects  of  music.  They 
will  probably  take  a  considerable  interest  in  public 
affairs.  Their  m&nage,  which  will  consist  of  father, 
mother,  and  children,  will,  I  think,  in  all  proba- 
bility, be  serv£uitless. 

They  will  probably  not  keep  a  servant  for  two 
very  excellent  reasons,  because  in  the  first  place 
they  will  not  want  one,  and  in  the  second  they  will 
not  get  one  if  they  do.  A  servant  is  necessary  in 
the  small,  modern  house,  partly  to  supplement  the 
deficiencies  of  the  wife,  but  mainly  to  supplement 
the  deficiencies  of  the  house.  She  comes  to  cook 
and  perform  various  skilled  duties  that  the  wife 
lacks  either  knowledge  or  training,  or  both,  to 
perform  regularly  and  expeditiously.  Usually 
it  must  be  confesed  that  the  servant  in  the  small 
household  fails  to  perform  these  skilled  duties 
completely.  But  the  great  proportion  of  the  ser- 
vant's duties  consists  merely  in  drudgery  that  the 
stupidities  of  our  present-day  method  of  house 

ii8 


CERTAIN     SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

construction  entail,  and  which  the  more  sanely- 
constructed  house  of  the  future  will  avoid.  Con- 
sider, for  instance,  the  wanton  disregard  of  avoid- 
able toil  displayed  in  building  houses  with  a  ser- 
vice basement  without  lifts!  Then  most  dusting 
and  sweeping  would  be  quite  avoidable  if  houses 
were  wiselier  done.  It  is  the  lack  of  proper  warm- 
ing appliances  which  necessitates  a  vast  amount 
of  coal  carrying  and  dirt  distribution,  and  it  is 
this  dirt  mainly  that  has  so  painfully  to  be  re- 
moved again.  The  house  of  the  future  will  prob- 
ably be  warmed  in  its  walls  from  some  power- 
generating  station,  as,  indeed,  already  very  manj'' 
houses  are  lighted  at  the  present  day.  The  lack, 
of  sane  methods  of  ventilation  also  enhances  the 
general  dirtiness  and  dustiness  of  the  present-day 
home,  and  gas-lighting  and  the  use  of  tarnishable 
metals,  wherever  possible,  involve  further  labor. 
But  air  will  enter  the  house  of  the  future  through 
proper  tubes  in  the  walls,  which  will  warm  it  and 
capture  its  dust,  and  it  will  be  spun  out  again  by 
a  simple  mechanism.  And  by  simple  devices  such 
sweeping  as  still  remains  necessary  can  be  enor- 
mously lightened.  The  fact  that  in  existing  homes 
the  skirting  meets  the  floor  at  right  angles  makes 
sweeping  about  twice  as  troublesome  as  it  will 
be  when  people  have  the  sense  and  ability  to  round 
off  the  angle  between  wall  and  floor. 

So  one  great  lump  of  the  servant's  toil  will  prac- 
tically disappear.     Two  others  are  already  dis- 

"9 


ANTICIPATIONS 

appearing.  In  many  houses  there  are  still  the 
offensive  duties  of  filling  lamps  and  blacking 
boots  to  be  done.  Our  coming  house,  however, 
will  have  no  lamps  to  need  filling,  and,  as  for  the 
boots,  really  intelligent  people  will  feel  the  essen- 
tial ugliness  of  wearing  the  evidence  of  constant 
manual  toil  upon  their  persons.  They  will  wear 
sorts  of  shoes  and  boots  that  can  be  cleaned  by 
wiping  in  a  minute  or  so.  Take  now  the  bedroom 
w^ork.  The  lack  of  ingenuity  in  sanitary  fittings 
at  present  forbids  the  obvious  convenience  of  hot 
and  cold  water  supply  to  the  bedroom,  and  there 
is  a  mighty  fetching  and  carrying  of  water  and 
slops  to  be  got  through  daily.  All  that  will  cease. 
Every  bedroom  will  have  its  own  bath-dressing 
room,  which  any  well-bred  person  will  be  intelli- 
gent and  considerate  enough  to  use  and  leave 
without  the  slightest  disarrangement.  This,  so 
far  as  "  up-stairs "  goes,  really  only  leaves  bed- 
making  to  be  done,  and  a  bed  does  not  take  five 
minutes  to  make.  Down-stairs  a  vast  amount 
of  needless  labor  at  present  arises  out  of  table 
wear.  "  Washing  up  "  consists  of  a  tedious  cleans- 
ing and  wiping  of  each  table  utensil  in  turn, 
whereas  it  should  be  possible  to  immerse  all  dirty 
table  wear  in  a  suitable  solvent  for  a  few  minutes 
and  then  run  that  off  for  the  articles  to  dry.  The 
application  of  solvents  to  window  cleaning,  also, 
would  be  a  possible  thing  but  for  the  primitive 
construction  of  our  windows,  which  prevents  any- 

120 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

thing  but  a  painful  rub,  rub,  rub,  with  the  leather. 
A  friend  of  mine  in  domestic  service  tells  me  that 
this  rubbing  is  to  get  the  window  dry,  and  this  seems 
to  be  the  general  impression,  but  I  think  it  incor- 
rect. The  water  is  not  an  adequate  solvent,  and 
enough  cannot  be  used  under  existing  conditions. 
Consequently,  if  the  window  is  cleaned  and  left 
wet,  it  dries  in  drops,  and  these  drops  contain 
dirt  in  solution  which  remain  as  spots.  But  water 
containing  a  suitable  solvent  could  quite  simply 
be  made  to  run  down  a  window  for  a  few  minutes 
from  pin-holes  in  a  pipe  above  into  a  groove  below, 
and  this  could  be  followed  by  pure  rain-water  for 
an  equal  time,  and  in  this  way  the- whole  window 
cleaning  in  the  house  could,  I  imagine,  be  reduced 
to  the  business  of  turning  on  a  tap. 

There  remains  the  cooking.  To-day  cooking, 
with  its  incidentals,  is  a  very  serious  business ;  the 
coaling,  the  ashes,  the  horrible  moments  of  heat, 
the  hot,  black  things  to  handle,  the  silly,  vague 
recipes,  the  want  of  neat  apparatus,  and  the  want 
of  intelligence  to  demand  or  use  neat  apparatus. 
One  always  imagines  a  cook  working  with  a  crim- 
soned face  and  bare,  blackened  arms.  But  with 
a  neat  little  range,  heated  by  electricity  and  pro- 
vided with  thermometers,  with  absolutely  con- 
trollable temperatures  and  proper  heat  screens, 
cooking  might  very  easily  be  made  a  pleasant 
amusement  for  intelligent  invalid  ladies.  Which 
reminds  one,  by-the-by,  as  an  added  detail  to  our 

121 


ANTICIPATIONS 

previous  sketch  of  the  scenery  of  the  days  to  come, 
that  there  will  be  no  chimneys  at  all  to  the  house 
of  the  future  of  this  type,  except  the  flue  for  the 
kitchen  smells.  This  will  not  only  abolish  the 
chimney  stack,  but  make  the  roof  a  clean  and 
pleasant  addition  to  the  garden  spaces  of  the 
home.* 

I  do  not  know  how  long  all  these  things  will  take 
to  arrive.  The  erection  of  a  series  of  experimental 
labor-saving  houses  by  some  philanthropic  per- 
son, for  exhibition  and  discussion,  would  certainly 
bring  about  a  very  extraordinary  advance  in  do- 
mestic comfort  even  in  the  immediate  future,  but 
the  fashions  in  philanthropy  do  not  trend  in  such 
practical  directions;  if  they  did  the  philanthropic 
person  would  probably  be  too  amenable  to  flattery 
to  escape  the  pushful  patentee  and  too  sensitive 
to  avail  himself  of  criticism  (which  rarely  succeeds 
in  being  both  penetrating  and  polite),  and  it  will 
probably  be  many  years  before  the  cautious  en- 
terprise of  advertising  firms  approximates  to  the 
economies  that  are  theoretically  possible  to-day. 
But  certainly  the  engineering  and  medical  sorts 
of  person  will  be  best  able  to  appreciate  the  pos- 
sibilities of  cutting  down  the  irksome  labors  of  the 
contemporary  home  and  most  likely  to  first  de- 
mand and  secure  them. 

•  That  interesting  book  by  Mr.  George  Sutherland,  Twentieth- 
century  Inventions,  is  very  suggestive  on  these  as  on  many 
other  matters. 

122 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

The  wife  of  this  ideal  home  may  probably  have 
a  certain  distaste  for  vicarious  labor,  that,  so  far 
as  the  immediate  minimum  of  duties  goes,  will 
probably  carry  her  through  them.  There  will 
be  few  servants  obtainable  for  the  small  homes  of 
the  future,  and  that  may  strengthen  her  sentiments. 
Hardly  any  woman  seems  to  object  to  a  system 
of  things  which  provides  that  another  woman 
should  be  made  rough-handed  and  kept  rough- 
minded  for  her  sake,  but,  with  the  enormous  diffu- 
sion of  levelling  information  that  is  going  on,  a 
perfectly  valid  objection  will  probably  come  from 
the  other  side  in  this  transaction.  The  servants 
of  the  past  and  the  only  good  servants  of  to-day 
are  the  children  of  servants  or  the  children  of  the 
old  labor  base  of  the  social  pyramid,  until  recently 
a  necessary  and  self-respecting  element  in  the 
State.  Machinery  has  smashed  that  base  and 
scattered  its  fragments;  the  tradition  of  self-re- 
specting inferiority  is  being  utterly  destroyed  in 
the  world.  The  contingents  of  the  abyss,  even, 
will  not  supply  daughters  for  this  purpose.  In  the 
community  of  the  United  States  no  native-born 
race  of  white  servants  has  appeared,  and  the  eman- 
cipated young  negress  degenerates  towards  the 
impossible — which  is  one  of  the  many  stimulants 
to  small  ingenmties  that  may  help  very  power- 
fully to  give  that  nation  the  industrial  leadership 
of  the  world.  The  servant  of  the  future,  if  indeed 
she  should  still  linger  in  the  small  household,  will 

123 


ANTICIPATIONS 

be  a  person  alive  to  a  social  injustice  and  the  un- 
successful rival  of  the  wife.  Such  servants  as 
wealth  will  retain  will  be  about  as  really  loyal 
and  servile  as  hotel  waiters,  and  on  the  same 
terms.  For  the  middling  sort  of  people  in  the  fut- 
ure maintaining  a  separate  manage  there  is  noth- 
ing for  it  but  the  practically  automatic  house  or 
flat,  supplemented,  perhaps,  by  the  restaurant  or 
the  hotel. 

Almost  certainly,  for  reasons  detailed  in  the 
second  chapter  of  these  Anticipations,  this  house- 
hold, if  it  is  an  ideal  type,  will  be  situated  away 
from  the  central  "town"  nucleus  and  in  pleas- 
ant surroundings.  And  I  imagine  that  the  sort 
of  woman  who  would  be  mother  and  mistress  of 
such  a  home  would  not  be  perfectly  content  unless 
there  were  a  garden  about  the  house.  On  account 
of  the  servant  difficulty  again,  this  garden  would 
probably  be  less  laboriously  neat  than  many  of 
our  gardens  to-day  —  no  "bedding -out,"  for  ex- 
ample, and  a  certain  parsimony  of  mown  lawn. 

To  such  a  type  of  home  it  seems  the  active,  scien- 
tifically trained  people  will  tend.  But  usually, 
I  think,  the  prophet  is  inclined  to  over-estimate 
the  number  of  people  who  will  reach  this  condi- 
tion of  affairs  in  a  generation  or  so,  and  to  under- 
estimate the  conflicting  tendencies  that  w411  make 
its  attainment  difficult  to  all,  and  impossible  to 
many,  and  that  will  for  many  years  tint  and  blotch 
the  achievement  of  those  who  succeed  with  patches 

124 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

of  unsympathetic  color.  To  understand  just  how 
modifications  may  come  in,  it  is  necessary  to  con- 
sider the  probable  line  of  development  of  another 
of  the  four  main  elements  in  the  social  body  of  the 
coming  time.  As  a  consequence  and  visible  ex- 
pression of  the  great  new  growth  of  share  and 
stock  property,  there  will  be  scattered  through  the 
whole  social  body,  concentrated  here,  perhaps, 
and  diffused  there,  but  everywhere  perceived,  the 
members  of  that  new  class  of  the  irresponsible 
wealthy,  a  class,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out 
in  the  preceding  paper,  miscellaneous  and  free 
to  a  degree  quite  unprecedented  in  the  world's 
history.  Quite  inevitably  great  sections  of  this 
miscellany  will  develop  characteristics  almost 
diametrically  opposed  to  those  of  the  typical  work- 
ing expert  class,  and  their  gravitational  attraction 
may  influence  the  lives  of  this  more  efficient, finally 
more  powerful,  but  at  present  much  less  wealthy, 
class  to  a  very  considerable  degree  of  intimacy. 

The  rich  share-holder  and  the  skilled  expert  must 
necessarily  be  sharply  contrasted  types,  and  of  the 
two  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  it  is  the  rich 
share -holder  who  spends  the  money.  While  oc- 
cupation and  s\d\\  incline  one  towards  severity 
and  economy,  leisure  and  unlimited  means  involve 
relaxation  and  demand  the  adventitious  interest 
of  decoration.  The  share-holder  will  be  the  decora- 
tive influence  in  the  State.  So  far  as  there  will 
be  a  typical  shareholder's  house,  we  may  hazard 

125 


ANTICIPATIONS 

that  it  will  have  rich  colors,  elaborate  hangings, 
stained-glass  adornments,  and  added  interests  in 
great  abundance.  This  "leisure  class"  will  cer- 
tainly employ  the  greater  proportion  of  the  artists, 
decorators,  fabric-makers,  and  the  like  of  the  com- 
ing time.  It  will  dominate  the  world  of  art — and 
we  may  say,  with  some  confidence,  that  it  will 
influence  it  in  certain  directions.  For  example, 
standing  apart  from  the  movement  of  the  world,  as 
they  will  do  to  a  very  large  extent,  the  archaic, 
opulently  done,  will  appeal  irresistibly  to  very  many 
of  these  irresponsible  rich  as  the  very  quintessence 
of  art.  They  will  come  to  art  with  uncritical,  cult- 
ured minds,  full  of  past  achievements,  ignorant 
of  present  necessities.  Art  will  be  something  added 
to  life — something  stuck  on  and  richly  reminis- 
cent— not  a  manner  pervading  all  real  things. 
We  may  be  pretty  sure  that  very  few  will  grasp 
the  fact  that  an  iron  bridge  or  a  railway  engine 
may  be  artistically  done — these  will  not  be  "  art " 
objects,  but  hostile  novelties.  And,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  can  pretty  confidently  foretell  a  spacious 
future  and  much  amplification  for  that  turgid, 
costly,  and  deliberate  anti  -  contemporary  group 
of  styles  of  which  William  Morris  and  his  asso- 
ciates have  been  the  fortunate  pioneers.  And 
the  same  principles  will  apply  to  costume.  A  non- 
functional class  of  people  cannot  have  a  functional 
costume;  the  whole  scheme  of  costume,  as  it  will 
be  worn  by  the  wealthy  classes  iiji  the  coming  years, 

126 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

will  necessarily  be  of  that  character  which  is  called 
fancy  dress.  Few  people  will  trouble  to  discover 
the  most  convenient  forms  and  materials,  and  en- 
deavor to  simplify  them  and  reduce  them  to  beau- 
tiful forms,  while  endless  enterprising  tradesmen 
will  be  alert  for  a  perpetual  succession  of  striking 
novelties.  The  women  will  ransack  the  ages  for 
becoming  and  alluring  anachronisms,  the  men 
will  appear  in  the  elaborate  uniforms  of  "games," 
in  modifications  of  "court"  dress,  in  picturesque 
revivals  of  national  costumes,  in  epidemic  fashions 
of  the  most  astonishing  sort. 

Now  these  people,  so  far  as  they  are  spenders 
of  money,  and  so  far  as  he  is  a  spender  of  money,- 
will  stand  to  this  ideal  engineering  sort  of  person, 
who  is  the  vitally  important  citizen  of  a  progres- 
sive scientific  state,  in  a  competitive  relation.  In 
most  cases,  whenever  there  is  something  that  both 
want,  one  against  the  other,  the  share-holder  will 
get  it ;  in  most  cases  where  it  is  a  matter  of  calling 
the  tune,  the  share-holder  will  call  the  tune.  For 
example,  the  young  architect,  conscious  of  excep- 
tional ability,  will  have  more  or  less  clearly  before 
him  the  alternatives  of  devoting  himself  to  the 
novel,  intricate,  and  difficult  business  of  design- 
ing cheap,  simple,  and  mechanically  convenient 
homes  for  people  who  will  certainly  not  be  highly 
remimerative,  and  will  probably  be  rather  acutely 
critical,  or  of  perfecting  himself  in  some  period  of 
romantic  architecture  or  striking  out  some  start- 

127 


ANTICIPATIONS 

ling  and  attractive  novelty  of  manner  or  material 
which  will  be  certain,  sooner  or  later,  to  meet  its 
congenial  share-holder.  Even  if  he  hover  for  a  time 
between  these  alternatives,  he  will  need  to  be  a 
person  not  only  of  exceptional  gifts,  but  what  is  by 
no  means  a  common  accompaniment  of  exception- 
al gifts,  exceptional  strength  of  character,  to  take 
the  former  line.  Consequently,  for  many  years 
yet  most  of  the  experimental  buildings  and  novel 
designs  that  initiate  discussion  and  develop  the 
general  taste  will  be  done  primarily  to  please  the 
more  originative  share-holders,  and  not  to  satisfy 
the  demands  of  our  engineer  or  doctor,  and  the 
strictly  commercial  builders  who  will  cater  for  all 
but  the  wealthiest  engineers,  scientific  investiga- 
tors, and  business  men,  being  unable  to  afford 
specific  designs,  will — amid  the  disregarded  curses 
of  these  more  intelligent  customers — still  simplj^ 
reproduce,  in  a  cheaper  and  mutilated  form,  such 
examples  as  happen  to  be  set.  Practically,  that 
is  to  say,  the  share-holder  will  buy  up  almost  all 
the  available  architectural  talent. 

This  modifies  our  conception  of  the  outer  appear- 
ance of  that  little  house  we  imagined.  Unless 
it  happens  to  be  the  house  of  an  exceptionally 
prosperous  member  of  the  utilitarian  professions, 
it  will  lack  something  of  the  neat  directness  im- 
plicit in  our  description,  something  of  that  inevit- 
able beauty  that  arises  out  of  the  perfect  attain-  ^ 
raent  of  ends — for  very  many  j''ears,  at  any  rate. 
•    128 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

It  will  almost  certainly  be  timed — it  may  even  be 
saturated  —  with  the  second-hand  archaic.  The 
owner  may  object;  but  a  busy  man  cannot  stop 
his  life-work  to  teach  architects  what  they  ought 
to  know.  It  may  be  heated  electrically,  but 
it  will  have  sham  chimneys,  in  whose  dark- 
ness, unless  they  are  built  solid,  dust  and  filth 
will  gather,  and  luckless  birds  and  insects  pass 
horrible  last  hours  of  ineffectual  struggle;  it  may 
have  automatic  window  -  cleaning  arrangements, 
but  they  will  be  hidden  by  "  picturesque  "  muUions. 
The  sham  chimneys  will,  perhaps,  be  made  to 
smoke  genially  in  winter  by  some  ingenious  con- 
trivance ;  there  may  be  sham  open  fireplaces  within, 
with  ingle-nooks  about  the  sham  glowing  logs. 
The  needlessly  steep  roofs  will  have  a  sham  sag 
and  sham  timbered  gables,  and  probably  forced 
lichens  will  give  it  a  sham  appearance  of  age. 
Just  that  feeble-minded  contemporary  shirking  of 
the  truth  of  things  that  has  given  the  world  such 
stockbroker-in-armor  affairs  as  the  Tower  Bridge 
and  historical  romance,  will,  I  fear,  worry  the  lu- 
cid mind  in  a  great  multitude  of  the  homes  that 
the  opening  half,  at  least,  of  this  century  will 
produce. 

In  quite  a  similar  way  the  share-holding  body 
will  buy  up  all  the  clever  and  more  enterprising 
makers  and  designers  of  clothing  and  adornment ; 
he  will  set  the  fashion  of  almost  all  ornament — in 
bookbinding  and  printing  and  painting,  for  ex- 
9  129 


ANTICIPATIONS 

ample,  furnishing,  and  indeed  of  almost  all  things 
that  are  not  primarily  produced  "for  the  million," 
as  the  phrase  goes.  And  where  that  sort  of  thing 
comes  in,  then,  so  far  as  the  trained  and  intelligent 
type  of  man  goes,  for  many  years  yet  it  will  be 
simply  a  case  of  the  nether  instead  of  the  upper 
millstone.  Just  how  far  the  influence  and  con- 
tagion of  the  share-holding  mass  will  reach  into 
this  imaginary  household  of  non-share-holding  effi- 
cients, and  just  how  far  the  influence  of  science 
and  mechanism  will  penetrate  the  minds  and 
methods  of  the  rich,  becomes  really  one  of  the 
most  important  questions  with  which  these  specu- 
lations will  deal.  For  this  argument,  that  he  will, 
perhaps,  be  able  to  buy  up  the  architect  and  the 
tailor  and  the  decorator  and  so  forth,  is  merely 
preliminary  to  the  graver  issue.  It  is  just  possi- 
ble that  the  share-holder  may,  to  a  very  large  ex- 
tent— in  a  certain  figurative  sense,  at  least — buy 
up  much  of  the  womankind  that  would  otherwise 
be  available  to  constitute  those  severe,  capable, 
and  probably  by  no  means  unhappy  little  estab- 
lishments to  which  our  typical  engineers  will  tend, 
and  so  prevent  many  women  from  becoming  moth- 
ers of  a  regenerating  world.  The  huge  secretion 
of  irresponsible  wealth  by  the  social  organism  is 
certain  to  affect  the  tone  of  thought  of  the  entire 
feminine  sex  profoundly.  The  exact  nature  of 
this  influence  we  may  now  consider. 

The  gist  of  this  inquiry  lies  in  the  fact  that, 
130 


CERTAIN     SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

while  a  man's  starting  position  in  this  world  of  to- 
day is  entirely  determined  by  the  conditions  of 
his  birth  and  early  training,  and  his  final  position 
the  slow,  elaborate  outcome  of  his  own  sustained 
efforts  to  live,  a  woman,  from  the  age  of  sixteen 
onward — as  the  world  goes  now — is  essentially 
adventurous,  the  creature  of  circumstances  largelj^ 
beyond  her  control  and  foresight.  A  virile  man — 
though  he,  too,  is  subject  to  accidents — may,  upon 
most  points,  still  hope  to  plan  and  determine  his 
life;  the  life  of  a  woman  is  all  accident.  Normally, 
she  lives  in  relation  to  some  specific  man,  and  until 
that  man  is  indicated  her  preparation  for  life  must 
be  of  the  most  tentative  sort.  She  lives,  going 
nowhere,  like  a  cabman  on  the  crawl,  and  at  any 
time  she  may  find  it  open  to  her  to  assist  some 
pleasure-loving  millionaire  to  spend  his  millions, 
or  to  play  her  part  in  one  of  the  many  real, 
original,  and  only  derivatives  of  the  former  aris- 
tocratic "society"  that  have  developed  themselves 
among  independent  people.  Even  if  she  is  a  seri- 
ous and  labor-loving  type,  some  share-holder  may 
tempt  her  with  the  prospect  of  developing  her  ex- 
ceptional personality  in  ease  and  freedom  and  in 
"  doing  good  "  with  his  money.  With  the  contin- 
ued growth  of  the  share-holding  class,  the  bright- 
er-looking matrimonial  chances,  not  to  speak  of 
the  glittering  opportunities  that  are  not  matri- 
monial, will  increase.  Reading  is  now  the  priv- 
ilege of  all  classes;  there  are  few  secrets  of  etiquette 

131 


ANTICIPATIONS 

that  a  clever  lower-class  girl  will  fail  to  learn ;  there 
are  few  such  girls,  even  now,  who  are  not  aware  of 
their  wide  opportunities,  or  at  least  their  wide  possi- 
bilities, of  luxury  and  freedom ;  there  are  still  fewer 
who,  knowing  as  much,  do  not  let  it  affect  their 
standards  and  conception  of  life.  The  whole  mass 
of  modern  fiction  written  by  women  for  women, 
indeed,  down  to  the  cheapest  novelettes,  is  saturated 
with  the  romance  of  mesalliance.  And  even  when 
the  specific  man  has  appeared,  the  adventurous 
is  still  not  shut  out  of  a  woman's  career.  A  man's 
affections  may  wander  capriciously  and  leave  him 
but  a  little  poorer  or  a  little  better  placed;  for  the 
women  they  wander  from,  however,  the  issue  is 
an  infinitely  graver  one,  and  the  serious  wandering 
of  a  woman's  fancy  may  mean  the  beginning  of 
a  new  world  for  her.  At  any  moment  the  chances 
of  death  may  make  the  wife  a  widow,  may  sweep 
out  of  existence  all  that  she  had  made  fundamental 
in  her  life,  may  enrich  her  with  insurance  profits 
or  hurl  her  into  poverty,  and  restore  all  the  drift- 
ing expectancy  of  her  adolescence. 

Now,  it  is  difficult  to  say  why  we  should  expect 
the  growing  girl,  in  whom  an  unlimited  ambition 
and  egotism  is  as  natural  and  proper  a  thing  as 
beauty  and  high  spirits,  to  den3'^  herself  some 
dalliance  with  the  more  opulent  dreams  that  form 
the  golden  lining  to  these  precarious  prospects. 
How  can  we  expect  her  to  prepare  herself  sole- 
ly, putting  all  wandering  thoughts  aside,  for  the 

132 


CERTAIN     SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

servantless  cookery,  domestic  Kindergarten  work, 
the  care  of  hardy  perennials,  and  low-pitched  con- 
versation of  the  engineer's  home?  Supposing, 
after  all,  there  is  no  predestinate  engineer!  The 
stories  the  growing  girl  now  prefers,  and  I  imagine 
will  in  the  future  still  prefer,  deal  mainly  with  the 
rich  and  free;  the  theatre  she  will  prefer  to  visit 
will  present  the  lives  and  loves  of  opulent  people 
with  great  precision  and  detailed  correctness;  her 
favorite  periodicals  will  reflect  that  life;  her  school- 
mistress, whatever  her  principles,  must  have  an 
eye  to  her  "chances."  And  even  after  Fate  or  a 
gust  of  passion  has  whirled  her  into  the  arms  of  our 
busy  and  capable  fundamental  man,  all  these' 
things  will  still  be  in  her  imagination  and  mem- 
ory. Unless  he  is  a  person  of  extraordinary  men- . 
tal  prepotency,  she  will  almost  insensibly  deter- 
mine the  character  of  the  home  in  a  direction  quite 
other  than  that  of  our  first  sketch.  She  will  set 
herself  to  realize,  as  far  as  her  husband's  means 
and  credit  permit,  the  ideas  of  the  particular  sec- 
tion of  the  wealthy  that  have  captured  her.  If  she 
is  a  fool,  her  ideas  of  life  will  presently  come  into 
complete  conflict  with  her  husband's  in  a  manner 
that,  as  the  fumes  of  the  love  potion  leave  his  brain, 
may  bring  the  real  nature  of  the  case  home  to  him. 
If  he  is  of  that  resolute  strain  to  whom  the  world 
must  finally  come,  he  may  rebel  and  wade  through 
tears  and  crises  to  his  appointed  work  again.  The 
cleverer  she  is,  and  the  finer  and  more  loyal  her 

133 


ANTICIPATIONS 

character  up  to  a  certain  point,  the  less  Hkely  this 
is  to  happen,  the  more  subtle  and  effective  will  be 
her  hold  upon  her  husband,  and  the  more  probable 
his  perversion  from  the  austere  pursuit  of  some 
interesting  employment  towards  the  adventures 
of  modern  money-getting  in  pursuit  of  her  ideals 
of  a  befitting  life.  And  meanwhile,  since  "one 
must  live,"  the  nursery  that  was  implicit  in  the 
background  of  the  first  picture  will  probably  prove 
unnecessary.  She  will  be,  perforce,  a  person  not 
only  of  pleasant  pursuits,  but  of  leisure.  If  she 
endears  herself  to  her  husband,  he  will  feel  not 
only  the  attraction  but  the  duty  of  her  vacant 
hours;  he  will  not  only  deflect  his  working  hours 
from  the  effective  to  the  profitable,  but  that  occa- 
sional burning  of  the  midnight  oil  that  no  brain- 
worker  may  forego  if  he  is  to  retain  his  efficiency 
will,  in  the  interests  of  some  attractive  theatrical 
performance  or  some  agreeable  social  occasion, 
all  too  frequently  have  to  be  put  off  or  abandoned. 
This  line  of  speculation,  therefore,  gives  us  a 
second  picture  of  a  household  to  put  beside  our 
first — a  household,  or  rather  a  couple,  rather  more 
likely  to  be  typical  of  the  mass  of  middling  sort ' 
of  people  in  those  urban  regions  of  the  future  than 
our  first  projection.  It  will  probably  not  live  in  a 
separate  home  at  all,  but  in  a  flat  in  "town,"  or 
at  one  of  the  subordinate  centres  of  the  urban  re- 
gion we  have  foreseen.  The  apartments  will  be 
more  or  less  agreeably  adorned  in  some  decorative 

134 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

fashion  akin  to,  but  less  costly  than,  some  of  the 
many  fashions  that  will  obtain  among  the  wealthy. 
They  will  be  littered  with  a  miscellaneous  literature 
— novels  of  an  entertaining  and  stimulating  sort 
predominating — and  with  hric-h-hrac ;  in  a  child- 
less household  there  must  certainly  be  quaint  dolls, 
pet  images,  and  so  forth,  and  perhaps  a  canary 
would  find  a  place.  I  suspect  there  would  be  an 
edition  or  so  of  Omar  about  in  this  more  typical 
household  of  "moderns,"  but  I  doubt  about  the 
Bible.  The  man's  working  books  would  probably 
be  shabby  and  relegated  to  a  small  study,  and  even 
these  overlaid  by  abundant  copies  of  the  Finan- 
cial something  or  other.  It  would  still  be  a  ser- 
vantless  household,  and  probably  not  only  without 
a  nursery  but  without  a  kitchen,  and  in  its  grade 
and  degree  it  would  probably  have  social  relations 
directly  or  intermediately  through  rich  friends  with 
some  section,  some  one  of  the  numerous  cults  of 
the  quite  independent  wealthy. 

Quite  similar  households  to  this  would  be  even 
more  common  among  those  neither  independent  nor 
engaged  in  work  of  a  primarily  functional  nature, 
but  endeavoring  quite  ostensibly  to  acquire  wealth 
by  political  or  business  ingenuity  and  activity, 
and  also  among  the  great  multitude  of  artists, 
writers,  and  that  sort  of  people,  whose  works  are 
their  children.  In  comparison  with  the  state  of 
affairs  fifty  years  ago,  the  child-infested  household 
is  already  conspicuously  rare  in  these  classes. 

135 


ANTICIPATIONS 

These  are  two  highly  probable  manages  among 
the  central  mass  of  the  people  of  the  coming  time. 
But  there  will  be  many  others.  The  manage  d, 
deux,  one  may  remark,  though  it  may  be  without 
the  presence  of  children,  is  not  necessarily  child- 
less. Parentage  is  certainly  part  of  the  pride  of 
many  men — though,  curiously  enough,  it  does  not 
appear  to  be  felt  among  modem  European  married 
women  as  any  part  of  their  honor.  Many  men 
will  probably  achieve  parentage,  therefore,  who 
will  not  succeed  in  inducing,  or  who  may  possibly 
even  be  very  loath  to  permit,  their  wives  to  under- 
take more  than  the  first  beginnings  of  motherhood. 
From  the  moment  of  its  birth,  unless  it  is  kept  as 
a  pet,  the  child  of  such  marriages  will  be  nour- 
ished, taught,  and  trained  almost  as  though  it 
were  an  orphan ;  it  will  have  a  succession  of  bottles 
and  foster-mothers  for  body  and  mind  from  the 
very  beginning.  Side  by  side  with  this  increasing 
number  of  childless  homes,  therefore,  there  may  de- 
velop a  system  of  Kindergarten  boarding-schools. 
Indeed,  to  a  certain  extent  such  schools  already 
exist,  and  it  is  one  of  the  unperceived  contrasts  of 
this  and  any  former  time  how  common  such  a  sep- 
aration of  parents  and  children  becomes.  Except 
in  the  case  of  the  illegitimate  and  orphans,  and 
the  children  of  impossible  (many  public-house 
children,  e.g.)  or  wretched  homes,  boarding-schools 
until  quite  recently  were  used  only  for  quite  big 
boys  and  girls.     But  now,  at  every  seaside  town, 

136 


CERTAIN     SOCIAL     REACTIONS 

for  example,  one  sees  a  multitude  of  preparatory 
schools,  which  are  really  not  simply  educational 
institutions,  but  supplementary  homes.  In  many 
cases  these  are  conducted,  and  very  largely  staffed, 
by  unmarried  girls  and  women,  who  are,  indeed, 
in  effect,  assistant  mothers.  This  class  of  capa- 
ble school-mistresses  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
social  developments  of  this  period.  For  the  most 
part  they  are  women  who,  from  emotional  fastidi- 
ousness, intellectual  egotism,  or  an  honest  lack  of 
passion,  have  refused  the  common  lot  of  marriage, 
women  often  of  exceptional  character  and  restraint, 
and  it  is  well  that,  at  any  rate,  their  intelligence 
and  character  should  not  pass  fruitlessly  out  of 
being.  Assuredly  for  this  type  the  future  has 
much  in  store. 

There  are,  however,  still  other  possibilities  to 
be  considered  in  this  matter.  In  these  Anticipa- 
tions it  is  impossible  to  ignore  the  forces  making 
for  a  considerable  relaxation  of  the  institution  of 
permanent  monogamous  marriage  in  the  coming 
years,  and  of  a  much  greater  variety  of  establish- 
ments than  is  suggested  by  these  possibilities 
within  the  pale.  I  guess,  without  attempting  to  re- 
fer to  statistics,  that  our  present  society  must  show 
a  quite  unprecedented  number  and  increasing 
number  of  male  and  female  celibates — not  religious 
celibates,  but  people  for  the  most  part  whose  stand- 
ard of  personal  comfort  has  such  a  relation  to  their 
earning  power  that  they  shirk  or  cannot  enter 

137 


ANTICIPATIONS 

the  matrimonial  grouping.  The  institution  of  per- 
manent monogamous  marriage — except  in  the  ideal 
Roman  Catholic  community,  where  it  is  based  oh 
the  sanction  of  an  authority  which  in  real  Roman 
Catholic  countries  a  large  proportion  of  the  men 
decline  to  obey — is  sustained  at  present  entirely 
by  the  inertia  of  custom  and  by  a  number  of  sen- 
timental and  practical  considerations  —  considera- 
tions that  may  very  possibly  undergo  modification 
in  the  face  of  the  altered  relationship  of  husband 
and  wife  that  the  present  development  of  childless 
m&na^es  is  bringing  about.  The  practical  and 
sustaining  reason  for  monogamy  is  the  stability 
it  gives  to  the  family;  the  value  of  a  stable  fam- 
ily lies  in  the  orderl3'  up-bringing  in  an  atmosphere 
of  affection  that  it  secures  in  most  cases  for  its 
more  or  less  numerous  children.  The  monoga- 
mous family  has  indisputably  been  the  civilizing 
unit  of  the  pre-mechanical  civilized  state.  It  must 
be  remembered  that  both  for  husband  and  wife  in 
most  cases  monogamic  life  marriage  involves  an 
element  of  sacrifice;  it  is  an  institution  of  late  ap- 
pearance in  the  history  of  mankind,  and  it  does  not 
completely  fit  the  psychology  or  physiology  of  any 
but  very  exceptional  characters  in  either  sex.  For 
the  man  it  commonly  involves  considerable  re- 
straint; he  must  ride  his  imagination  on  the  curb, 
or  exceed  the  code  in  an  extremely  dishonoring, 
furtive,  and  unsatisfactory  manner  while  publicly 
professing  an  impossible  virtue;  for  the  woman  it 

138 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

commonly  implies  many  uncongenial  submissions. 
There  are  probably  few  married  couples  who  have 
escaped  distressful  phases  of  bitterness  and  tears, 
within  the  constrain  of  their,  in  most  cases,  practi- 
cally insoluble  bond.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  and 
as  a  reward  that  in  the  soberer,  mainly  agricultural 
civilization  of  the  past,  and  among  the  middling 
class  of  people,  at  any  rate,  has  sufficed,  there  comes 
the  great  development  of  associations  and  tender- 
nesses that  arises  out  of  intimate  co-operation  in 
an  established  home,  and  particularly  out  of  the 
linking  love  and  interest  of  children's  lives. 

But  how  does  this  fit  into  the  childless,  disunited, 
and  probably  shifting  manage  of  our  second  picture? 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  it  has  been  the 
middling  and  lower  mass  of  people,  the  tenants 
and  agriculturists,  the  shop-keepers,  and  so  forth, 
men  needing  before  all  things  the  absolutely  loyal 
help  of  wives,  that  has  sustained  permanent  mon- 
ogamic  marriage  whenever  it  has  been  sustained. 
Public  monogamy  has  existed  on  its  merits — that 
is,  on  the  merits  of  the  wife.  Merely  ostensible 
reasons  have  never  sufficed.  No  sort  of  religious 
conviction,  without  a  real  practical  utility,  has 
ever  availed  to  keep  classes  of  men,  unhampered 
by  circumstances,  to  its  restrictions.  In  all  times, 
and  holding  all  sorts  of  beliefs,  the  specimen  hu- 
manity of  courts  and  nobilities  is  to  be  found  de- 
veloping the  most  complex  qualifications  of  the 
code.     In  some  quiet  corner  of  Elysium  the  bishops 

139 


ANTICIPATIONS 

of  the  early  Georges,  the  ecclesiastical  di/j^nitaries 
of  the  contemporary  French  and, Spanish  courts, 
the  patriarchs  of  vanished  Byzantium,  will  find 
a  common  topic  with  the  spiritual  advisers  of  the 
kingdoms  of  the  East  in  this  difficult  theme— the 
theme  of  the  concessions  permissible  and  expedient 
to  earnest  believers  encumbered  with  leisure  and 
a  superfluity  of  power.  ...  It  is  not  necessary  to 
discuss  religious  development,  therefore,  before  de- 
ciding this  issue.  We  are  dealing  now  with  things 
deeper  and  forces  infinitely  more  powerful  than 
the  mere  convictions  of  men. 

Will  a  generation,  to  whom  marriage  will  be  no 
longer  necessarily  associated  with  the  birth  and 
rearing  of  children,  or  with  the  immediate  co-opera- 
tion and  sympathy  of  husband  and  wife  in  common 
proceedings,  retain  its  present  feeling  for  the  ex- 
treme sanctity  of  the  permanent  bond?  Will  the 
agreeable,  unemployed,  childless  woman,  with  a 
high  conception  of  her  personal  rights,  who  is 
spending  her  husband's  earnings  or  income  in 
some  pleasant  discrepant  manner,  a  type  of  wom- 
an there  are  excellent  reasons  for  anticipating  will 
become  more  frequent — will  she  continue  to  share 
the  honors  and  privileges  of  the  wife,  mother,  and 
helper  of  the  old  dispensation?  And,  in  particular, 
will  the  great  gulf  that  is  now  fixed  by  custom 
between  her  and  the  agreeable  unmarried  lady 
who  is  similarly  employed  remain  so  inexorably 
wide?    Charity  is  in  the  air,  and  why  should  not 

140 


CERTAIN     SOCIAL     REACTIONS 

charming  people  meet  one  another?  And  where  is 
either  of  these  ladies  to  find  the  support  that  will 
enable  her  to  insist  upon  the  monopoly  that  con- 
ventional sentiment,  so  far  as  it  finds  expression, 
concedes  her?  The  danger  to  them  both  of  the 
theory  of  equal  liberty  is  evident  enough.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  the  case  of  the  unmarried  mother 
who  may  be  helped  to  hold  her  own,  or  who  may 
be  holding  her  own  in  the  world,  where  will  the 
moral  censor  of  the  year  1950  find  this  congenial 
following  to  gather  stones?  Much  as  we  may 
regret  it,  it  does  very  greatly  affect  the  realities  of 
this  matter  that  with  the  increased  migration  of 
people  from  home  to  home  amid  the  large  urban 
regions  that,  we  have  concluded,  will  certainly 
obtain  in  the  future,  even  if  moral  reprobation  and 
minor  social  inconveniences  do  still  attach  to  cer- 
tain sorts  of  status,  it  will  probably  be  increasingly 
difficult  to  determine  the  status  of  people  who  wish 
to  conceal  it  for  any  but  criminal  ends. 

In  another  direction  there  must  be  a  movement 
towards  the  relaxation  of  the  marriage  law  and  of 
divorce  that  will  complicate  status  very  confusingly. 
In  the  past  it  has  been  possible  to  sustain  several 
contrasting  moral  systems  in  each  of  the  prac- 
tically autonomous  states  of  the  world,  but  with  a 
development  and  cheapening  of  travel  and  migra- 
tion that  is  as  yet  only  in  its  opening  phase,  an  in- 
creasing conflict  between  divSsimilar  moral  restric- 
tions must  appear.     Even  at  present,  with  only 

141 


ANTICIPATIONS 

the  most  prosperous  classes  of  the  American  and 
Western  European  countries  migrating  at  all 
freely,  there  is  a  growing  amount  of  inconvenience 
arising  out  of  these — from  the  point  of  view  of 
social  physiology — quite  arbitrary  differences.  A 
man  or  woman  may,  for  example,  have  been  the 
injured  party  in  some  conjugal  complication,  may 
have  established  a  domicile  and  divorced  the  erring 
spouse  in  certain  of  the  United  States,  may  have 
married  again  there  with  absolute  local  propriety, 
and  may  be  a  bigamist  and  a  criminal  in  Eng- 
land. A  child  may  be  a  legal  child  in  Denmark  or 
Australia,  and  a  bastard  in  this  austerer  climate. 
These  things  are,  however,  only  the  first  intimations 
of  much  more  profound  reactions.  Almost  all  the 
great  European  powers,  and  the  United  States 
also,  are  extending  their  boundaries  to  include 
great  masses  of  non-Christian  polygamous  peoples, 
and  they  are  permeating  these  peoples  with  rail- 
ways, printed  matter,  and  all  the  stimulants  of 
our  present  state.  With  the  spread  of  these  con- 
veniences there  is  no  corresponding  spread  of  Chris- 
tianity. These  people  will  not  always  remain  in 
the  ring  fence  of  their  present  regions ;  their  super- 
seded princes,  and  rulers,  and  public  masters,  and 
managers,  will  presently  come  to  swell  the  share- 
holding mass  of  the  appropriating  empire.  Eu- 
ropeans, on  the  other  hand,  will  drift  into  these  dis- 
tricts, and,  under  the  influence  of  their  customs, 
intermarriages  and  inter -racial  reaction  will  in- 

142 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

crease;  in  a  world  which  is  steadily  abolishing 
locality,  the  compromise  of  local  concessions,  of 
localized  recognition  of  the  "custom  of  the  coun- 
try,'' carmot  permanently  avail.  Statesmen  will 
have  to  face  the  alternative  of  either  widening  the 
permissible  variations  of  the  marriage  contract, 
or  of  acute  racial  and  religious  stresses,  of  a  vast 
variety  of  possible  legal  betrayals,  and  the  appear- 
ance of  a  body  of  self-respecting  people,  outside 
the  law  and  public  respect,  a  body  that  will  confer 
a  touch  of  credit  upon,  because  it  will  share  the 
stigma  of,  the  deliberately  dissolute  and  criminal. 
And  whether  the  moral  law  shrivels  relatively  by 
mere  exclusiveness — as  in  religious  matters  the 
Church  of  England,  for  example,  has  shrivelled 
to  the  proportions  of  a  mere  sectarian  practice — 
or  whether  it  broadens  itself  to  sustain  justice  in 
a  variety  of  sexual  contracts,  the  net  result,  so 
far  as  our  present  purpose  goes,  will  be  the  same. 
All  these  forces,  making  for  moral  relaxation  in 
the  coming  time,  will  probably  be  greatly  enhanced 
by  the  line  of  development  certain  sections  of  the 
irresponsible  wealthy  will  almost  certainly  follow. 
Let  me  repeat  that  the  share-holding  rich  man 
of  the  new  time  is  in  a  position  of  freedom  almost 
unparalleled  in  the  history  of  men.  He  has  sold 
his  permission  to  control  and  experiment  with  the 
material  wealth  of  the  commimity  for  freedom — 
for  freedom  from  care,  labor,  responsibility^,  cus- 
tom, local  usage,  and  local  attachment.     He  may 

143 


ANTICIPATIONS 

come  back  again  into  public  affairs  if  he  likes — 
that  is  his  private  concern.  Within  the  limits 
of  the  law  and  his  capacity  and  courage,  he  may 
do  as  the  imagination  of  his  heart  directs.  Now 
such  an  experimental  and  imperfect  creature  as 
man,  a  creature  urged  by  such  imperious  passions, 
so  weak  in  imagination  and  controlled  by  so  feeble 
a  reason,  receives  such  absolute  freedom  as  this 
only  at  infinite  peril.  To  a  great  number  of  these 
people,  in  the  second  or  third  generation,  this  free- 
dom will  mean  vice,  the  subversion  of  passion  to 
inconsequent  pleasures.  We  have  on  record,  in 
the  personal  history  of  the  Roman  emperors,  how 
freedom  and  uncontrolled  power  took  one  repre- 
sentative group  of  men,  men  not  entirely  of  one 
blood  nor  of  one  bias,  but  reinforced  by  the  arbi- 
trary caprice  of  adoption  and  political  revolution. 
We  have  in  the  history  of  the  Russian  empresses 
a  glimpse  of  similar  feminine  possibilities.  We  are 
moving  towards  a  time  when,  through  this  con- 
fusion of  moral  standards  I  have  foretold,  the  press- 
ure of  public  opinion  in  these  matters  must  be 
greatly  relaxed,  when  religion  will  no  longer  speak 
with  an  unanimous  voice,  and  when  freedom  of 
escape  from  disapproving  neighbors  will  be  great- 
ly facilitated.  In  the  past,  when  depravity  had 
a  centre  about  a  court,  the  contagion  of  its  ex- 
ample was  limited  to  the  court  region,  but  every 
idle  rich  man  of  this  great,  various,  and  widely 
diffused  class  will  play  to  a  certain  extent  the  moral 

144 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

r61e  of  a  court.  In  these  days  of  universal  read- 
ing and  vivid  journalism,  every  novel  infraction  of 
the  code  will  be  known  of,  thought  about,  and  more 
or  less  thoroughly  discussed  by  an  enormous  and 
increasing  proportion  of  the  common  people.  In 
the  past  it  has  been  possible  for  the  churches  to 
maintain  an  attitude  of  respectful  regret  towards 
the  lapses  of  the  great,  and  even  to  co-operate 
in  these  lapses  with  a  sympathetic  privacy  while 
maintaining  a  wholesome  rigor  towards  vulgar 
vice.  But  in  the  coming  time  there  will  be  no 
great  but  many  rich ;  the  middling  sort  of  people 
will  probably  be  better  educated  as  a  whole  than 
the  ricli,  and  the  days  of  their  differential  treat- 
ment are  at  an  end. 

It  is  foolish,  in  view  of  all  these  things,  not  to 
anticipate  and  prepare  for  a  state  of  things  when 
not  only  will  moral  standards  be  shifting  and  un- 
certain, admitting  of  physiologically  sound  man- 
ages of  very  variable  status,  but  also  when  vice 
and  depravity,  in  every  form  that  is  not  absolute- 
ly penal,  will  be  practised  in  every  grade  of  mag- 
nificence and  condoned.  This  means  that  not  only 
will  status  cease  to  be  simple  and  become  complex 
and  varied,  but  that  outside  the  system  of  man- 
ages now  recognized  and  under  the  disguise  of 
which  all  other  manages  shelter,  there  will  be  a 
vast  drifting  and  unstable  population  grouped  in 
almost  every  conceivable  form  of  relation.  The 
world  of  Georgian  England  was  a  world  of  homes ; 
10  T45 


ANTICIPATIONS 

the  world  of  the  coming  time  will  still  have  its 
homes,  its  real  mothers,  the  custodians  of  the  hu- 
man succession,  and  its  cared  -  for  children,  the 
inheritors  of  the  future;  but,  in  addition  to  this 
home  world,  frothing  tumultuously  over  and  amid 
these  stable  rocks,  there  will  be  an  enormous 
complex  of  establishments,  and  hotels,  and  sterile 
households,  and  flats,  and  all  the  elaborate  furnish- 
ing and  appliances  of  a  luxurious  extinction. 

And  since  in  the  present  social  chaos  there  does 
not  yet  exist  any  considerable  body  of  citizens — 
comparable  to  the  agricultural  and  commercial 
middle  class  of  England  during  the  period  of  lim- 
ited monarchy — that  will  be  practically  unani- 
mous in  upholding  any  body  of  rules  or  moral 
restraint,  since  there  will  probably  not  appear 
for  some  generations  any  body  propounding  with 
wide-reaching  authority  a  new  definitely  different 
code  to  replace  the  one  that  is  now  likely  to  be  in- 
creasingly disregarded,  it  follows  that  the  present 
code,  with  a  few  interlined  qualifications  and 
grudging  legal  concessions,  will  remain  nominally 
operative  in  sentiment  and  practice  while  being 
practically  disregarded,  glossed,  or  replaced  in  num- 
berless directions.  It  must  be  pointed  out  that, 
in  effect,  what  is  here  forecast  for  questions  of  man- 
age and  moral  restraints  has  already  happened  to 
a  very  large  extent  in  religious  matters.  There 
was  a  time  when  it  was  held — and  I  think  rightly 
— that  a  man's  religious  beliefs,  and  particularly 

146 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

his  method  of  expressing  them,  was  a  part  not  of 
his  individual  but  of  his  social  life.  But  the  great 
upheavals  of  the  Reformation  resulted  finally  in 
a  compromise,  a  sort  of  truce,  that  has  put  religious 
belief  very  largely  out  of  intercourse  and  discussion. 
It  is  conceded  that  within  the  bounds  of  the  general 
peace  and  security  a  man  may  believe  and  express 
his  belief  in  matters  of  religion  as  he  pleases,  not 
because  it  is  better  so,  but  because  for  the  present 
epoch  there  is  no  way  nor  hope  of  attaining  unan- 
imous truth.  There  is  a  decided  tendency  that 
will,  I  believe,  .prevail  towards  the  same  compro- 
mise in  the  question  of  private  morals.  There 
is  a  convention  to  avoid  all  discussion  of  creeds 
in  general  social  intercourse;  and  a  similar  con- 
vention to  avoid  the  point  of  status  in  relation  to 
marriage,  one  may  very  reasonably  anticipate, 
will  be  similarly  recognized. 

But  this  impending  dissolution  of  a  common 
standard  of  morals  does  not  mean  universal  de- 
pravitj'^  imtil  some  great  reconstruction  obtains,  any 
more  than  the  obsolescence  of  the  Conventicle  Act 
means  universal  irreligion.  It  means  that  for  one 
morality  there  will  be  many  moralities.  Each 
human  being  will,  in  the  face  of  circumstances, 
work  out  his  or  her  particular  early  training  as 
his  or  her  character  determines.  And  although 
there  will  be  a  general  convention  upon  which  the 
most  diverse  people  will  meet,  it  will  only  be  with 
persons  who  have  come  to  identical  or  similar  con- 

147 


ANTICIPATIONS 

elusions  in  the  matter  of  moral  conduct  and  who 
are  living  in  similar  m4na^es,  just  as  now  it  is  only 
with  people  whose  conversation  implies  a  certain 
community  or  kinship  of  religious  belief  that 
really  frequent  and  intimate  intercourse  will  go 
on.  In  other  words,  there  will  be  a  process  of  mor- 
al segregation*  set  up.  Indeed,  such  a  process  is 
probably  already  in  operation,  amid  the  deliques- 
cent social  mass.  People  will  be  drawn  together 
into  little  groups  of  similar  menages  having  much 
in  common.  And  this — in  view  of  the  considera- 
tions advanced  in  the  first  two  chapters  —  consid- 
erations all  converging  on  the  practical  abolition 
of  distances  and  the  general  freedom  of  people  to 
live  anywhere  they  like  over  large  areas,  will  mean 
very  frequently  an  actual  local  segregation.  There 
will  be  districts  that  will  be  clearly  recognized  and 
marked  as  "nice/'  fast  regions,  areas  of  ram- 
shackle bohemianism,  regions  of  earnest  and  act- 
ive work,  old-fashioned  corners  and  hill -tops. 
Whole  regions  will  be  vset  aside  for  the  purposes  of 
opulent  enjoyment — a  thing  already  happening,  in- 
deed, at  points  along  the  Riviera  to-day.  Already 
the  superficial  possibilities  of  such  a  segregation 
have  been  glanced  at.  It  has  been  pointed  out  that 
the  enormous  urban  region  of  the  future  may  pre- 

*  I  use  the  word  "  segregation  "  here  and  always  as  it  is  used 
by  mineralogists  to  express  the  slow  conveyance  of  diffused 
matter  towards  centres  of  aggregation,  such  a  process  as,  for 
example,  must  have  occurred  in  the  growth  of  flints. 

I4cS 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

sent  an  extraordinary  variety  of  districts,  suburbs, 
and  subordinate  centres  within  its  limiting  bound- 
aries, and  here  we  have  a  very  definite  enforce- 
ment of  that  probabihty. 

In  that  previous  chapter  I  spoke  of  boating  cen- 
tres, and  horsy  suburbs,  and  picturesque  hilly  dis- 
tricts, and  living  places  by  the  sea,  of  promenade 
centres  and  theatrical  districts ;  I  hinted  at  various 
fashions  in  architecture,  and  such  like  things,  but 
these  exterior  appearances  will  be  but  the  outward 
and  visible  sign  of  inward  and  more  spiritual  dis- 
tinctions. The  people  who  live  in  the  good  hunt- 
in<T  country  and  about  that  glittering  grand-stand 
will  no  longer  be  even  pretending  to  live  under  the 
same  code  as  those  picturesque  musical  people 
who  have  concentrated  on  the  canoe-dotted  river. 
Where  the  promenaders  gather,  and  the  bands  are 
playing,  and  the  pretty  little  theatres  compete,  the 
pleasure-seeker  will  be  seeking  such  pleasure  as 
he  pleases,  no  longer  debased  by  furtiveness  and 
innuendo,  going  his  primrose  path  to  a  congenial, 
picturesque,  happy,  and  highly  desirable  extinc- 
tion. Just  over  the  hills,  perhaps,  a  handful  of 
opulent  share-holders  will  be  pleasantly  preserving 
the  old  traditions  of  a  landed  aristocracy,  with  ser- 
vants, tenants,  vicar,  and  other  dependents  all  com- 
plete, and  what  from  the  point  of  view  of  social 
physiology  will  really  be  an  arrested  contingent 
of  the  abyss,  but  all  nicely  washed  and  done  good 
to.  will  pursue  home  industries  in  model  cottages 

149 


ANTICIPATIONS 

in  a  quite  old  English  and  exemplary  manner. 
Here  the  windmills  will  spin  and  the  water-falls 
be  trapped  to  gather  force,  and  the  quiet-eyed  mas- 
ter of  the  machinery  will  have  his  office,  and  per- 
haps his  private  home.  Here  about  the  great  col- 
lege and  its  big  laboratories  there  will  be  men  and 
women  reasoning  and  studying ;  and  here,  where 
the  homes  thicken  among  the  ripe  gardens,  one 
will  hear  the  laughter  of  playing  children,  the 
singing  of  children  in  their  schools,  and  see  their 
little  figures  going  to  and  fro  amid  the  trees  and 
flowers. 

And  these  segregations,  based  primarily  on  a 
difference  in  moral  ideas  and  pursuits  and  ideals, 
will  probably  round  off  and  complete  themselves 
at  last  as  distinct  and  separate  cultures.  As  the 
moral  ideas  realize  themselves  in  manage  and  habits, 
so  the  ideals  will  seek  to  find  expression  in  a  litera- 
ture, and  the  passive  drifting  together  will  pass 
over  into  a  phase  of  more  or  less  conscious  and  in- 
tentional organization.  The  segregating  groups 
will  develop  fashions  of  costume,  types  of  manners 
and  bearing,  and  even,  perhaps,  be  characterized 
by  a  certain  type  of  facial  expression.  And  this 
gives  us  a  glimpse,  an  aspect  of  the  immediate 
future  of  literature.  The  kingdoms  of  the  past 
were  little  things,  and  above  the  mass  of  peasants 
who  lived  and  obeyed  and  died  there  was  just  one 
little  culture  to  which  all  must  needs  conform. 
Literature  was  universal  within  the  limits  of  its 

150 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

language.  Where  differences  of  view  arose  there 
were  violent  controversies,  polemics,  and  perse- 
cutions, until  one  or  other  rendering  had  won  its 
ascendency.  But  this  new  world  into  which  we 
are  passing  will,  for  several  generations  at  least, 
albeit  it  will  be  freely  inter  -  communicating  and 
like  a  whispering  gallery  for  things  outspoken,  pos- 
sess no  universal  ideals,  no  universal  conventions; 
there  will  be  the  literature  of  the  thought  and  effort 
of  this  sort  of  people,  and  the  literature,  thought, 
and  effort  of  that.*  Life  is  already  most  wonder- 
fully arbitrary  and  experimental,  and  for  the  com- 
ing century  this  must  be  its  essential  social  history, 
a  great  drifting  and  unrest  of  people,  a  shifting 
and  regrouping  and  breaking-up  again  of  groups, 
great  multitudes  seeking  to  find  themselves. 

The  safe  life  in  the  old  order,  where  one  did  this 
because  it  was  right,  and  that  because  it  was  the 
custom,  when  one  shunned  this  and  hated  that,  as 

*  Already  this  is  becoming  apparent  enough.  The  literary 
"  boom,"  for  example,  affected  the  entire  reading  public  of  the 
early  nineteenth  century.  It  was  no  figure  of  speech  that  "every 
one  "  was  reading  Byron  or  puzzling  about  the  Waverley  mys- 
tery, that  first  and  most  successful  use  of  the  unknown-author 
dodge.  The  booming  of  Dickens,  too,  forced  him  even  into  the 
reluctant  hands  of  Omar's  Fitzgerald.  But  the  factory-siren 
voice  of  the  modern  "  boomster  "  touches  whole  sections  of 
the  reading  public  no  more  than  fog-horns  going  down  channel. 
One  would  as  soon  think  of  Skinner's  soap  for  one's  library 
as  So-and-so's  hundred  -  thousand  -  copy  success.  Instead  of 
"  every  one "  talking  of  the  great  new  book,  quite  considerable 
numbers  are  shamelessly  admitting  they  don't  read  that  sort 
of  thing.  One  gets  used  to  literary  booms  just  as  one  gets  used 
to  motor  cars ;  they  are  no  longer  marvellous,  universally  signifi- 


ANTICIPATIONS 

lead  runs  into  a  mould,  all  that  is  passing  away. 
And  presently,  as  the  new  century  opens  out,  there 
will  become  more  and  more  distinctly  emergent 
many  new  cultures  and  settled  ways.  The  gray 
expanse  of  life  to-day  is  gray,  not  in  its  essence, 
but  because  of  the  minute,  confused  mingling  and 
mutual  cancelling  of  many  colored  lives.  Pres- 
ently these  tints  and  shades  will  gather  together 
here  as  a  mass  of  one  color,  and  there  as  a  mass 
of  another.  And  as  these  colors  intensify  and 
the  tradition  of  the  former  order  fades,  as  these 
cultures  become  more  and  more  shaped  and  con- 
scious, as  the  new  literatures  grow  in  substance 
and  power,  as  differences  develop  from  speculative 
matter  of  opinion  to  definite  intentions,  as  contrasts 
and  affinities  grow  sharper  and  clearer,  there  must 
follow  some  very  extensive  modifications  in  the 
collective  public  life.  But  one  series  of  tints,  one 
color,  must  needs  have  a  heightening  value  amid 

cant  things,  but  merely  something  that  goes  by  with  much 
unnecessary  noise  and  leaves  a  faint  offence  in  the  air.  Dis- 
tinctly we  segregate.  And  while  no  one  dominates,  while  for 
all  this  bawling  there  are  really  no  great  authors  of  imperial 
dimensions,  indeed  no  great  successes  to  compare  with  the  Waver- 
ley  boom,  or  the  boom  of  Macaulay's  history,  many  men,  too 
fine,  too  subtle,  too  aberrant,  too  unusually  fresh  for  any  but 
exceptional  readers,  men  who  would  probably  have  failed  to 
get  a  hearing  at  all  in  the  past,  can  now  subsist  quite  happily 
with  the  little  sect  they  have  found,  or  that  has  found  them. 
They  live  safely  in  their  islands ;  a  little  while  ago  they  could 
not  have  lived  at  all,  or  could  have  lived  only  on  the  shameful 
bread  of  patronage,  and  yet  it  is  these  very  men  who  are  often 
most  covetously  bitter  against  the  vvdgar  preferences  of  the 
present  day. 


CERTAIN    SOCIAL    REACTIONS 

this  iridescent  display.  While  the  forces  at  work 
in  the  wealthy  and  purely  speculative  groups  of 
society  make  for  disintegration,  and  in  many 
cases  for  positive  elimination,  the  forces  that  bring 
together  the  really  functional  people  will  tend 
more  and  more  to  impose  upon  them  certain  com- 
mon characteristics  and  beliefs,  and  the  discovery 
of  a  group  of  similar  and  compatible  class  interests 
upon  which  they  can  unite.  The  practical  people, 
the  engineering  and  medical  and  scientific  people, 
will  become  more  and  more  homogeneous  in  their 
fundamental  culture,  more  and  more  distinctly 
aware  of  a  common  "general  reason"  in  things, 
and  of  a  common  difference  from  the  less  functional 
masses  and  from  any  sort  of  people  in  the  past. 
They  will  have  in  their  positive  science  a  common 
ground  for  understanding  the  real  pride  of  life, 
the  real  reason  for  the  incidental  nastiness  of  vice, 
and  so  they  will  be  a  sanely  reproductive  class,  and, 
above  all,  an  educating  class.  Just  how  much 
they  will  have  kept  or  changed  of  the  deliques- 
cent morality  of  to-day,  when  in  a  hundred  years 
or  so  they  do  distinctively  and  powerfully  emerge, 
I  cannot  speculate  now.  They  will  certainly  be 
a  moral  people.  They  will  have  developed  the  lit- 
erature of  their  needs,  they  will  have  discussed 
and  tested  and  thrashed  out  many  things ;  they  will 
be  clear  where  we  are  confused,  resolved  where 
we  are  undecided  and  weak.  In  the  districts  of 
industrial   possibility,    in   the   healthier   quarters 

153 


ANTICIPATIONS 

ol  the  town  regions,  away  from  the  swamps  and 
away  from  the  glare  of  the  midnight  hghts,  these 
people  will  be  gathered  together.  They  will  be 
linked  in  professions  through  the  agencies  of 
great  and  sober  papers.  In  England  the  Lancet, 
the  British  Medical  Journal,  and  the  already  great 
periodicals  of  the  engineering  trades,  foreshadow 
something,  but  only  a  very  little,  of  what  these 
papers  may  be.  The  best  of  the  wealthy  will  gravi- 
tate to  their  attracting  centres.  .  .  .  Unless  some 
great  catastrophe  in  nature  break  down  all  that 
man  has  built,  these  great  kindred  groups  of  cap- 
able men  and  educated,  adequate  women  must 
be,  under  the  operation  of  the  forces  we  have  con- 
sidered so  far,  the  element  finally  emergent  amid 
the  vast  confusions  of  the  coming  time. 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF 
DEMOCRACY 


THE     LIFE-HISTORY    OF 
DEMOCRACY 


IN  the  preceding  four  chapters  there  has  been 
developed,  in  a  clumsy,  laborious  way,  a 
smudgy,  imperfect  picture  of  the  generalized  civil- 
ized state  of  the  coming  century.  In  terms  vague 
enough  at  times,  but  never  absolutely  indefinite, 
the  general  distribution  of  the  population  in  this 
state  has  been  discussed,  and  its  natural  develop- 
ment into  four  great — but  in  practice  intimately 
interfused — classes.  It  has  been  shown — I  know 
not  how  convincingly — that  as  the  result  of  forces 
that  are  practically  irresistible,  a  world-wide  process 
of  social  and  moral  deliquescence  is  in  progress, 
and  that  a  really  fimctional  social  body  of  en- 
gineering, managing  men,  scientifically  trained 
and  having  common  ideals  and  interests,  is  likel37^ 
to  segregate  and  disentangle  itself  from  our  pres- 
ent confusion  of  aimless  and  ill-directed  lives.  It 
has  been  pointed  out  that  life  is  presenting  an 
unprecedented  and  increasing  variety  of  morals, 
manages,    occupations,   and   types,  at   present   so 

157 


ANTICIPATIONS 

mingled  as  to  give  a  general  effect  of  grayness — 
but  containing  the  promise  of  local  concentration 
that  ma\^  presently  change  that  grayness  into 
kaleidoscopic  effects.  That  image  of  concentrating, 
contrasted  colors  will  be  greatly  repeated  in  this 
present  chapter.  In  the  course  of  these  inquiries, 
we  have  permitted  ourselves  to  take  a  few  concrete 
glimpses  of  households,  costumes,  conveyances, 
and  conveniences  of  the  coming  time,  but  only  as 
incidental  realizations  of  points  in  this  general 
thesis.  And  now,  assuming,  as  we  must  neces- 
sarily do,  the  soundness  of  these  earlier  specula- 
tions, we  have  arrived  at  a  stage  when  we  may 
consider  how  the  existing  arrangements  for  the 
ostensible  government  of  the  state  are  likely  to 
develop  through  their  own  inherent  forces,  and 
how  they  are  likely  to  be  affected  by  the  processes 
we  have  forecast. 

So  far,  this  has  been  a  speculation  upon  the 
probable  development  of  a  civilized  society  in 
vacuo.  Attention  has  been  almost  exclusively 
given  to  the  forces  of  development,  and  not  to  the 
forces  of  conflict  and  restraint.  We  have  ignored 
the  boundaries  of  language  that  are  flimg  athwart 
the  great  lines  of  modern  communication ;  we  have 
disregarded  the  friction  of  tariffs,  the  peculiar 
groups  of  prejudices  and  irrational  instincts  that  in- 
spire one  miscellany  of  share-holders,  workers,  finan- 
ciers, and  superfluous  poor  such  as  the  English, 
to  hate,  exasperate,  lie  about,  and  injure  another 

T58 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

such  miscellany  as  the  French  or  the  Germans. 
Moreover,  we  have  taken  very  little  account  of  the 
fact  that,  quite  apart  from  nationality,  each  in- 
dividual case  of  the  new  social  order  is  developing 
within  the  form  of  a  legal  government  based  on 
conceptions  of  a  society  that  has  been  superseded 
by  the  advent  of  mechanism.  It  is  this  last  matter 
that  we  are  about  to  take  into  consideration. 

Now  this  age  is  being  constantly  described  as 
a  "democratic"  age;  "democracy"  is  alleged  to 
have  affected  art,  literature,  trade,  and  religion 
alike  in  the  most  remarkable  ways.  It  is  not 
only  tacitly  present  in  the  great  bulk  of  contem- 
porary thought  that  this  "democracy"  is  now 
dominant,  but  that  it  is  becoming  more  and  more 
overwhelmingly  predominant  as  the  years  pass. 
Allusions  to  democracy  are  so  abundant,  de- 
ductions from  its  influence  so  confident  and  uni- 
versal, that  it  is  worth  while  to  point  out  what  a 
very  hollow  thing  the  word  in  most  cases  really 
is — a  large,  empty  object  in  thought,  of  the  most 
vague  and  faded  associations  and  the  most  at- 
tenuated content,  and  to  inquire  just  exactly  what 
the  original  implications  and  present  realities  of 
"democracy"  may  be.  The  inquiry  will  leave 
us  with  a  very  different  conception  of  the  nature 
and  future  of  this  sort  of  political  arrangement 
from  that  generally  assumed.  We  have  al- 
ready seen,  in  the  discussion  of  the  growth  of 
great  cities,  that  an  analytical  process  may  ab- 

159 


ANTICIPATIONS 

solutely  invert  the  expectation  based  on  the  gross 
results  up  to  date,  and  I  beheve  it,  will  be  equally 
possible  to  show  cause  for  believing  that  the  devel- 
opment of  democracy  also  is,  after  all,  not  the  open- 
ing phase  of  a  world-wide  movement  going  on 
unbendingly  in  its  present  direction,  but  the  first 
impulse  of  forces  that  will  finally  sweep  round  into 
a  quite  different  path.  Flying  off  at  a  tangent  is 
probably  one  of  the  gravest  dangers,  and  certain- 
ly the  one  most  constantly  present,  in  this  enter- 
prise of  prophecy. 

One  may,  I  suppose,  take  the  Rights  of  Man  as 
they  are  embodied  in  the  French  declaration  as  the 
ostentations  of  democracy ;  our  present  democratic 
state  may  be  regarded  as  a  practical  realization  of 
these  claims.  As  far  as  the  individual  goes,  the  re- 
alization takes  the  form  of  an  imtrammelled  liberty 
in  matters  that  have  heretofore  been  considered  a 
part  of  social  procedure,  in  the  lifting  of  positive 
religious  and  moral  compulsions,  in  the  recognition 
of  absolute  property,  and  in  the  abolition  of  spe- 
cial privileges  and  sj)ecial  restrictions.  Politically, 
modem  democracy  takes  the  form  of  denying  that 
any  specific  person  or  persons  shall  act  as  a  matter 
of  intrinsic  right  or  capacit}'^  on  behalf  of  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole.  Its  root-idea  is  representation. 
Government  is  based  primarily  on  election,  and 
every  ruler  is,  in  theory  at  least,  a  delegate  and  ser- 
vant of  the  popular  will.  It  is  implicit  in  the  dem- 
ocratic theory  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  pop- 

i6o 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

ular  will,  and  this  is  supposed  to  be  the  net  sum 
of  the  wills  of  all  the  citizens  in  the  state,  so  far 
as  public  affairs  are  concerned.  In  its  less  perfect 
and  more  usual  state  the  democratic  theory  is  ad- 
vanced either  as  an  ethical  theory  which  pos- 
tulates an  absence  of  formal  acquiescence  on 
the  part  of  the  governed  as  injustice,  or  else  as 
a  convenient  political  compromise,  the  least  ob- 
jectionable of  all  possible  methods  of  public  con- 
trol, because  it  will  permit  only  the  minimum  of 
general  unhappiness.  ...  I  know  of  no  case  for 
the  elective  democratic  government  of  modern 
states  that  cannot  be  knocked  to  pieces  in  five 
minutes.  It  is  manifest  that  upon  countless  im- 
portant public  issues  there  is  no  collective  will, 
and  nothing  in  the  mind  of  the  average  man  ex- 
cept blank  indifference;  that  an  electional  sys- 
tem simply  places  power  in  the  hands  of  the  most 
skilful  electioneers;  that  neither  men  nor  their 
rights  are  identically  equal,  but  vary  with  every 
individual,  and,  above  all,  that  the  minimum  or 
maximum  of  general  happiness  is  related  only 
so  indirectly  to  the  public  control  that  people  will 
suffer  great  miseries  from  their  governments  un- 
resistingly, and,  on  the  other  hand,  change  their 
rulers  on  account  of  the  most  trivial  irritations. 
The  case  against  all  the  prolusions  of  ostensible 
democracy  is,  indeed,  so  strong  that  it  is  impos- 
sible to  consider  the  present  wide  establishment  of 
democratic  institutions  as  being  the  outcome  of 
It  i6i 


ANTICIPATIONS 

any  process  of  intellectual  conviction;  it  arouses 
suspicion  even  whether  ostensible  -democracy  may 
not  be  a  mere  rhetorical  garment  for  essentially 
different  facts,  and  upon  that  suspicion  we  will 
now  inquire. 

Democracy  of  the  modern  type  —  manhood  suf- 
frage, and  so  forth  —  became  a  conspicuous  phe- 
nomenon in  the  world  only  in  the  closing  decades  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  Its  genesis  is  so  intimately 
connected  with  the  first  expansion  of  the  productive 
element  in  the  state,  through  mechanism  and  a 
co-operative  organization,  as  to  point  at  once  to  a 
causative  connection.  The  more  closely  one  looks 
into  the  social  and  political  life  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  more  plausible  becomes  this  view.  New 
and  potentially  influential  social  factors  had  begun 
to  appear — the  organizing  manufacturer,  the  in- 
telligent worker,  the  skilled  tenant,  and  the  urban 
abyss,  and  the  traditions  of  the  old  land-owning, 
non-progressive,  aristocratic  monarchy  that  pre- 
vailed in  Christendom  rendered  it  incapable — 
without  some  destructive  shock  or  convulsion — 
of  any  reorganization  to  incorporate  or  control 
these  new  factors.  In  the  case  of  the  British  em- 
pire an  additional  stress  was  created  by  the  inca- 
pacity of  the  formal  government  to  assimilate  the 
developing  civilization  of  the  American  colonies. 
Everywhere  there  were  new  elements,  not  as  yet 
clearly  analyzed  or  defined,  arising  as  mechanism 
arose;  everywhere  the  old  traditional  government 

162 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

and  social  system,  defined  and  analyzed  all  too 
well,  appeared  increasingly  obstructive,  irrational, 
and  feeble  in  its  attempts  to  include  and  direct 
these  new  powers.  But  now  comes  a  point  to 
which  I  am  inclined  to  attach  very  great  importance. 
The  new  powers  were  as  yet  shapeless.  It  was 
not  the  conflict  of  a  new  organization  with  the  old. 
It  was  the  preliminary  dwarfing  and  deliquescence 
of  the  mature  old  beside  the  embryonic  mass  of 
the  new.  It  was  impossible  then — it  is,  I  believe, 
only  beginning  to  be  possible  now — to  estimate 
the  proportions,  possibilities,  and  inter-relations  of 
the  new  social  orders  out  of  which  a  social  organi- 
zation has  still  to  be  built  in  the  coming  years. 
No  formula  of  definite  reconstruction  had  been 
evolved,  or  has  even  been  evolved  3^et,  after  a  hun- 
dred years.  And  these  swelling,  inchoate  new 
powers,  whose  very  birth-condition  was  the  crip- 
pling, modification,  or  destruction  of  the  old  order, 
were  almost  forced  to  formulate  their  proceedings 
for  a  time,  therefore,  in  general  affirmative  propo- 
sitions that  were  really  in  effect  not  affirmative 
propositions  at  all,  but  propositions  of  repudiation 
and  denial.  "  These  kings  and  nobles  and  people 
privileged  in  relation  to  obsolescent  functions 
cannot  manage  our  affairs" — that  was  evident 
enough,  that  was  the  really  essential  question  at 
that  time,  and  since  no  other  effectual  substitute 
appeared  ready  made,  the  working  doctrine  of  the 
infallible  judgment  of  humanity  in  the  gross,  as 

163 


ANTICIPATIONS 

distinguished  from  the  quite  indisputable  incapacity 
of  sample  individuals,  became,  in  spite  of  its  inher- 
ent absurdity,  a  convenient  and  acceptable  work- 
ing hypothesis. 

Modern  democracy  thus  came  into  being,  not,  as 
eloquent  persons  have  pretended,  by  the  sovereign 
people  consciously  and  definitely  assuming  power 
— I  imagine  the  sovereign  people  in  France  during 
the  first  revolution,  for  example,  quite  amazed 
and  muddle-headed  with  it  all — but  by  the  decline 
of  old  ruling  classes  in  the  face  of  the  quasi-natural 
growth  of  mechanism  and  industrialism,  and  by 
the  unpreparedness  and  want  of  organization  in 
the  new  intelligent  elements  in  the  state.  I  have 
compared  the  human  beings  in  society  to  a  great 
and  increasing  variety  of  colors  tumultuously 
smashed  up  together,  and  giving  at  present  a 
general  and  quite  illusory  effect  of  gray,  and  I 
have  attempted  to  show  that  there  is  a  process  in 
progress  that  will  amount  at  last  to  the  segrega- 
tion of  these  mingled  tints  into  recognizable,  dis- 
tinct masses  again.  It  is  not  a  monotony,  but 
an  utterly  disorderly  and  confusing  variety  that 
makes  this  gray;  but  democracy,  for  practical 
purposes,  does  really  assume  such  a  monotony. 
Like  OO,  the  democratic  formula  is  a  concrete- 
looking  and  negotiable  symbol  for  a  negation. 
It  is  the  aspect  in  political  disputes  and  contri- 
vances of  that  social  and  moral  deliquescence 
the  nature  and  possibilities    of  which  have  been 

164 


THE    LIFE- HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

discussed  in    the    preceding   papers   of    this    se- 
ries. 

Modern  democracy  first  asserted  itself  in  the 
ancient  kingdoms  of  France  and  Great  Britain 
(counting  the  former  British  colonies  in  America 
as  a  part  of  the  latter),  and  it  is  in  the  French  and 
English-speaking  communities  that  democracy 
has  developed  itself  most  completely.  Upon  the 
supposition  we  have  made,  democracy  broke  out 
first  in  these  states  because  they  were  leading  the 
way  in  material  progress,  because  they  were  the 
first  states  to  develop  industrialism,  wholesale 
mechanisms,  and  great  masses  of  insubordinate 
activity  outside  the  recognized  political  scheme, 
and  the  nature  and  time  and  violence  of  the  out- 
break were  determined  by  the  nature  of  the  super- 
seded government,  and  the  amount  of  stress 
between  it  and  the  new  elements.  But  the  detach- 
ment of  a  great  section  of  the  new  middle-class 
from  the  aristocratic  order  of  England  to  form  the 
United  States  of  America,  and  the  sudden  re- 
juvenescence of  France  by  the  swift  and  thorough 
sloughing  of  its  outworn  aristocratic  monarchy, 
the  consequent  wars,  and  the  Napoleonic  advent- 
ure, checked  and  modified  the  parallel  development 
that  might  otherwise  have  happened  in  country 
after  country  over  all  Europe  west  of  the  Car- 
pathians. The  monarchies  that  would  probably 
have  collapsed  through  internal  forces  and  given 
place  to  modern  democratic  states  were  smashed 

165 


ANTICIPATIONS 

from  the  outside,  and  a  process  of  political  recon- 
struction, that  has  probably  missed  out  the  com- 
plete  formal    democratic    phase    altogether — and 
which  has  been  enormously  complicated  through 
religious,  national,  and  dynastic  traditions  —  set 
in.     Throughout  America,  in  England,  and,  after 
extraordinary   -experiments,    in    France,    political 
democracy  has,  in  effect,  legally  established  itself 
— most  completely  in  the  United  States — and  the 
reflection  and  influence  of  its  methods  upon  the 
methods  of  all  the  other  countries  in  intellectual 
contact  with  it  have  been  so  considerable  as  prac- 
tically to  make  their  monarchies  as  new  in  their 
kind,  almost,  as  democratic  republics.    In  Germany, 
Austria,  and  Italy,  for  example,  there  is  a  press 
nearly  as  audible  as  in  the  more  frankly  democrat- 
ic countries,  and  measurably  akin  in  influence; 
there  are  constitutionally  established  legislative  as- 
semblies, and  there  is  the  same  unofficial  develop- 
ment of  powerful  financial  and  industrial  powers 
with  which  the  ostensible  government  must  make 
terms.     In  a  vast  amount  of  the  public  discussion 
of  these  states,  the  postulates  of  democracy  are 
clearly  implicit.     Quite  as  much  in  reality  as  the 
democratic  republics  of  America,  are  they  based 
not  on  classes,  but  upon  a  confusion;    they  are, 
in  their  various  degrees  and  with  their  various  in- 
dividual differences,  just  as  truly  governments  of 
the  gray. 

It  has  been  argued  that  the  gray  is  illusory,  and 
i66 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

must  sooner  or  later  pass,  and  that  the  color  that 
will  emerge  to  predominance  will  take  its  shape  as 
a  scientifically  trained  middle-class  of  an  unprec- 
edented sort,  not  arising  out  of  the  older  middle- 
classes,  but  replacing  them.  This  class  will 
become,  I  believe,  at  last  consciously  the  state, 
controlling  and  restricting  very  greatly  the  three 
non-functional  masses  with  which  it  is  as  yet 
almost  indistinguishably  mingled.  The  general 
nature  of  its  formation  within  the  existing  con- 
fusion and  its  emergence  may,  I  think,  with  a 
certain  degree  of  confidence,  be  already  forecast, 
albeit  at  present  its  beginnings  are  singularly  un- 
promising and  faint.  At  present  the  class  of 
specially  trained  and  capable  people — doctors,  en- 
gineers, scientific  men  of  all  sorts — is  quite  dis- 
proportionally  absent  from  political  life;  it  does 
not  exist  as  a  factor  in  that  life;  it  is  growing  up 
outside  that  life,  and  has  still  to  develop,  much  more 
to  display,  a  collective  intention  to  come  specifical- 
ly in.  But  the  forces  are  in  active  operation  to 
drag  it  into  the  centre  of  the  stage  for  all  that. 

The  modern  democracy,  or  democratic  quasi- 
monarchy,  conducts  its  affairs  as  though  there  was 
no  such  thing  as  special  knowledge  or  practical 
education.  The  utmost  recognition  it  affords  to  the 
man  who  has  taken  the  pains  to  know,  and  specif- 
ically to  do,  is  occasionally  to  consult  him  upon 
specific  points  and  override  his  counsels  in  its 
ampler  wisdom,  or  to  intrust  to  him  some  otherwise 

167 


ANTICIPATIONS 

impossible  duty  under  circumstances  of  extreme 
limitation.  The  man  of  special  equipment  is  treat- 
ed always  as  if  he  were  some  sort  of  curious  per- 
forming animal.  The  gunnery  specialist,  for  ex- 
ample, may  move  and  let  off  guns,  but  he  may  not 
say  where  they  are  to  be  let  off — some  one  a  little 
ignorant  of  range  and  trajectory  does  that ;  the  en- 
gineer may  move  the  ship  and  fire  the  battery,  but 
only  with  some  man,  who  does  not  perfectly  un- 
derstand, shouting  instructions  down  a  tube  at 
him.  If  the  cycle  is  to  be  adapted  to  military 
requirements,  the  thing  is  intrusted  to  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  Balfour.  If  horses  are  to  be  bought  for 
the  British  army  in  India,  no  specialist  goes,  but 
Lord  Edward  Cecil.  These  people  of  the  govern- 
ing class  do  not  understand  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  special  knowledge  or  an  inexorable  fact  in  the 
world;  they  have  been  educated  at  schools  con- 
ducted by  amateur  school-masters,  whose  real  aim 
in  life — if  such  people  can  be  described  as  having  a 
real  aim  in  life — is  the  episcopal  bench,  and  they 
have  learned  little  or  nothing  but  the  extraordinary 
power  of  appearances  in  these  democratic  times. 
To  look  right  and  to  be  of  good  report  is  to  succeed 
— what  else  is  there  ?  The  primarily  functional 
men  are  ignored  in  the  ostensible  political  scheme; 
it  operates  as  though  they  did  not  exist,  as  though 
nothing,  in  fact,  existed  but  the  irresponsible 
wealthy,  and  the  manipulators  of  irresponsible 
wealth,  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  great,  gray,  politi- 

i68 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

cally  indifferent  community  on  the  other.  Having 
regard  only  to  the  present  condition  of  political 
life,  it  would  seem  as  though  this  state  of  affairs 
must  continue  indefinitely,  and  develop  only  in 
accordance  with  the  laws  of  inter-action  between 
our  charlatan  governing  class  on  the  one  hand 
and  the  graj''  mass  of  governed  on  the  other.  There 
is  no  way  apparent  in  the  existing  political  and 
social  order  whereby  the  class  of  really  educated 
persons  that  the  continually  more  complicated 
mechanical  fabric  of  social  life  is  developing 
may  be  expected  to  come  in.  And  in  a  very  great 
amount  of  current  political  speculation  the  develop- 
ment and  final  emergence  of  this  class  is  ignored, 
and  attention  is  concentrated  entirely  upon  the  in- 
herent process  of  development  of  the  political  ma- 
chine. And  even  in  that  it  is  very  easy  to  exag- 
gerate the  preponderance  of  one  or  other  of  what 
are  really  very  evenly  balanced  forces  in  the  ma- 
chine of  democratic  government. 

There  are  two  chief  sets  of  parts  in  the  ma- 
chine that  have  a  certain  antagonistic  relation, 
that  play  against  each  other,  and  one's  conception 
of  coming  developments  is  necessarily  determined 
by  the  relative  value  one  gives  to  these  opposing 
elements.  One  may  compare  these  two  groups 
to  the  power  and  the  work,  respectively,  at  the 
two  ends  of  a  lever.*    On  the  one  hand  there  is 

*  The  fulcrum,  which  is  generally  treated  as  being  absolutely 
immovable,  being  tlie  general  belief  in  the  theory  of  democracy. 

169 


ANTICIPATIONS 

that  which  pays  for  the  machine,  which  distributes 
salaries  and  rewards,  subsidizes  newspapers,  and 
so  forth — the  central  influence.*  On  the  other 
hand  there  is  the  collectively  gray  voting  mass, 
with  certain  prejudices  and  traditions,  and  certain 
laws  and  limifations  of  thought  upon  which  the 
newspapers  work,  and  which,  within  the  confines 
of  its  inherent  laws,  they  direct.  If  one  dwell 
chiefly  on  the  possibilities  of  the  former  element, 
one  may  conjure  up  a  practical  end  to  democracy 
in  the  vision  of  a  state  "  run  "  entirely  by  a  group 
of  highly  forcible  and  intellectual  persons — usual- 
ly the  dream  takes  the  shape  of  financiers  and 
their  associates,  their  perfected  mechanism  of  party 
control  working  the  elections  boldly  and  capably, 
and  their  public  policy  being  directed  towards 
financial  ends.  One  of  the  common  prophecies  of 
the  future  of  the  United  States  is  such  a  domina- 
tion by  a  group  of  trust  organizers  and  political 
bosses.  But  a  man,  or  a  group  of  men,  so  strong 
and  intelligent  as  would  be  needed  to  hold  an 
entire  party  machine  within  the  confines  of  his — 

*  In  the  United  States,  a  vast,  rapidly  developing  country, 
with  relatively  much  kinetic  wealth,  this  central  influence  is 
the  financial  support  of  the  boss,  consisting,  for  the  most  part, 
of  active-minded,  capable  business  organizers ;  in  England, 
the  land  where  irresponsible  realized  wealth  is  at  a  maximum, 
a  public-spirited  section  of  the  irresponsible,  inspired  by  the 
tradition  of  an  aristocratic  functional  past,  qualifies  the  financial 
influence  with  an  amateurish,  indolent,  and  publicly  unprofitable 
integrity.  In  Germany  an  aggressively  functional  court  oc- 
cupies the  place  and  plays  the  part  of  a  permanently  dominant 
party  machine. 

170 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

or  their  collective — mind  and  will,  could,  at  the 
most,  be  but  a  very  transitory  and  incidental 
phenomenon  in  the  history  of  the  world.  Either 
such  an  exploitation  of  the  central  control  will 
have  to  be  covert  and  subtle  beyond  any  precedent 
in  human  disingenuousness,  or  else  its  domina- 
tion will  have  to  be  very  amply  modified,  indeed, 
by  the  requirements  of  the  second  factor,  and  its 
proceedings  made  very  largely  the  resultant  of 
that  second  factor's  forces.  Moreover,  very  subtle 
men  do  not  aim  at  things  of  this  sort,  or  aim- 
ing, fail,  because  subtlety  of  intelligence  involves 
subtlety  of  character,  a  certain  fastidiousness,  and 
a  certain  weakness.  Now  that  the  garrulous  pe- 
riod, when  a  flow  of  language  and  a  certain  effec- 
tiveness of  manner  was  a  necessary  condition  to 
political  pre-eminence,  is  passing  away,  political 
control  falls  more  and  more  entirely  into  the 
hands  of  a  barristerish,  intriguing  sort  of  person 
with  a  tough  -  wearing,  leathery,  practical  mind. 
The  sort  of  people  who  will  work  the  machine  are 
people  with  "faith,"  as  the  popular  preachers  say 
— meaning,  in  fact,  people  who  do  not  analyze, 
people  who  will  take  the  machine  as  it  is,  unques- 
tioningly  shape  their  ambitions  to  it,  end — saving 
their  vanity — work  it  as  it  wants  to  go.  The  man 
who  will  be  boss  will  be  the  man  who  wants  to  be 
boss,  who  finds  in  being  boss  a  complete  and  final 
satisfaction,  and  not  the  man  who  complicates 
things  by  wanting  to  be  boss  in  order  to  be,  or  do, 

171 


ANTICIPATIONS 

v«iomething  else.  The  machines  are  governed  to- 
day, and  there  is  every  reason  to  beheve  that  they 
will  continue  to  be  governed,  by  masterful-looking 
resultants,  masters  of  nothing  but  compromise, 
and  that  little  fancy  of  an  inner  conspiracy  of 
control  within  the  machine  and  behind  ostensible 
politics  is  really  on  all  fours  with  the  wonderful 
Rodin  (of  the  Juif  Errant),  and  as  probable  as 
anything  else  in  the  romances  of  Eugene  Sue. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  direct  attention  to 
the  antagonistic  element  in  the  machine,  to  public 
opinion,  to  the  alleged  collective  mind  of  the  gray 
mass,  and  consider  how  it  is  brought  to  believe  in 
itself  and  its  possession  of  certain  opinions  by  the 
concrete  evidence  of  daily  newspapers  and  eloquent 
persons  saying  as  much,  we  may  also  very  readily 
conjure  up  a  contrasted  vision  of  extraordinary 
demagogues  or  newspaper  sj^^ndicates  working 
the  political  machine  from  that  direction.  So  far 
as  the  demagogue  goes,  the  increase  of  popula- 
tion, the  multiplication  of  amusements  and  in- 
terests, the  differentiation  of  social  habits,  the 
diffusion  of  great  towns,  all  militate  against  that 
sufficient  gathering  of  masses  of  voters  in  meet- 
ing-houses which  gave  him  his  power  in  the 
recent  past.  It  is  improbable  that  ever  again  will 
any  flushed,  undignified  man  with  a  vast  voice, 
a  muscular  face  in  incessant  operation,  collar 
crumpled,  hair  disordered,  and  arms  in  wild  ac- 
tivity, talking,  talking,  talking,  talking  copiously 

172 


THE    LIFE- HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

out  of  the  windows  of  railway  carriages,  talking 
on  railway  platforms,  talking  from  hotel  balconies, 
talking  on  tubs,  barrels,  scaffoldings,  pulpits — 
tireless  and  undammable — rise  to  be  the  most 
powerful  thing  in  any  democratic  state  in  the 
world.  Continually  the  individual  vocal  dema- 
gogue dwindles,  and  the  element  of  bands  and 
buttons,  the  organization  of  the  press  and  pro- 
cession, the  share  of  the  machine,  grows. 

Mr.  Harmsworth,  of  the  London  Daily  Mail,  in 
a  very  interesting  article  has  glanced  at  certain 
possibilities  of  power  that  may  vest  in  the  owners 
of  a  great  system  of  world-wide  "  simultaneous " 
newspapers,  but  he  does  not  analyze  the  nature  of 
the  influence  exercised  by  newspapers  during  the 
successive  phases  of  the  nineteenth  century,  nor 
the  probable  modifications  of  that  influence  in  the 
years  to  come,  and  I  think,  on  the  whole,  he  in- 
clines very  naturally  to  over-estimate  the  amount 
of  intentional  direction  that  may  be  given  by  the 
owner  of  a  paper  to  the  minds  and  acts  of  his  read- 
ers, and  to  exceed  the  very  definite  limits  within 
which  that  influence  is  confined.  In  the  earlier  Vic- 
torian period,  the  more  limited,  partly  educated, 
and  still  very  homogeneous  enfranchised  class  had 
a  certain  habit  of  thinking ;  its  tranquil  assurance 
upon  most  theological  and  all  moral  and  aesthetic 
points  left  political  questions  as  the  chief  field 
of  exercise  for  such  thinking  as  it  did,  and,  as  a 
consequence,    the    dignified    newspapers    of   that 

173 


ANTICIPATIONS 

time  were  able  to  discuss,  and  indeed  were  required 
to  discuss,  not  only  specific  situations,  but  general 
principles.  That,  indeed,  was  their  principal  func- 
tion, and  it  fell  rather  to  the  eloquent  men  to  mis- 
apply these  principles  according  to  the  necessitj'^ 
of  the  occasion.  The  papers  did  then  very  much 
more  than  they  do  now  to  mould  opinion,  though 
they  did  not  direct  affairs  to  anything  like  the 
extent  of  their  modern  successors.  They  made 
roads  upon  which  events  presently  travelled  in 
unexpected  fashions.  But  the  often  cheaper  and 
always  more  vivid  newspapers  that  have  come 
with  the  new  democracy  do  nothing  to  mould 
opinion.  Indeed,  there  is  no  longer  upon  most 
public  questions — and  as  I  have  tried  to  make 
clear  in  my  previous  paper,  there  is  not  likely  to 
be  any  longer — a  collective  opinion  to  be  mould- 
ed. Protectionists,  for  example,  are  a  mere  band; 
free-traders  are  a  mere  band;  on  all  these  details 
we  are  in  chaos.  And  these  modern  newspapers 
simply  endeavor  to  sustain  a  large  circulation, 
and  so  merit  advertisements,  by  being  as  mis- 
cellaneously and  vividly  interesting  as  possible, 
bj"  firing  where  the  crowd  seems  thickest,  by  seek- 
ing perpetually,  and  without  any  attempt  at  con- 
sistency, the  greatest  excitement  of  the  greatest 
number.  It  is  upon  the  cultivation  and  rapid 
succession  of  inflammatory  topics  that  the  modem 
newspaper  expends  its  capital  and  trusts  to  recover 
its  reward.     Its  general  news  sinks  steadily  to  a 

174 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

subordinate  position;  criticism,  discussion,  and 
high  responsibihty  pass  out  of  journaHsm,  and  the 
power  of  the  press  comes  more  and  more  to  be  a 
dramatic  and  emotional  power,  the  power  to  cry 
"  Fire!"  in  the  theatre,  the  power  to  give  enormous 
value  for  a  limited  time  to  some  personality,  some 
event,  some  aspect,  true  or  false,  without  any 
power  of  giving  a  specific  direction  to  the  forces 
this  distortion  may  set  going.  Directly  the  press 
of  to-day  passes  from  that  sort  of  thing  to  some 
specific  proposal,  some  implication  of  principles 
and  beliefs,  directly  it  chooses  and  selects,  then  it 
passes  from  the  miscellaneous  to  the  sectarian, 
and  out  of  touch  with  the  gray  indefiniteness  of 
the  general  mind.  It  gives  offence  here,  it  perplexes 
and  bores  there;  no  more  than  the  boss  politician, 
can  the  paper  of  great  circulation  afford  to  work 
consistently  for  any  ulterior  aim. 

This  is  the  limit  of  the  power  of  the  modern  news- 
paper of  large  circulation,  the  newspaper  that 
appeals  to  the  gray  element,  to  the  average  demo- 
cratic man,  the  newspaper  of  the  deliquescence,  and 
if  our  previous  conclusion,  that  human  society  has 
ceased  to  be  homogeneous  and  will  presently  dis- 
play new  masses  segregating  from  a  great  con- 
fusion, holds  good,  that  will  be  the  limit  of  its 
power  in  the  future.  It  may  undergo  many  re- 
markable  developments   and   modifications,*   but 

*  The  nature  of  these  modifications  is  an  interesting  side 
issue.     There  is  every  possibility  of  papers  becoming  at  last  papers 


ANTICIPATIONS 

none  of  these  tend  to  give  it  any  greater  political 
importance  than  it  has  now.  And  so,  after  all, 
our  considerations  of  the  probable  developments 

of  world-wide  circulation,  so  far  as  the  language  in  which  they 
are  printed  permits,  with  editions  that  will  follow  the  sun  and 
change  into  to-morrow's  issue  as  they  go,  picking  up  literary 
criticism  here,  financial  intelligence  there,  here  to-morrow's 
story,  and  there  to-morrow's  scandal,  and,  like  some  vast  in- 
tellectual garden-roller,  rolling  out  local  provincialism  at  evciy 
revolution.  This,  for  papers  in  English,  at  any  rate,  is  merely 
a  question  of  how  long  it  will  be  before  the  price  of  the  best  writing 
(for  journalistic  purposes)  rises  actually  or  relatively  above 
the  falling  cost  of  long-distance  electrical  type-setting.  E^ch 
of  the  local  editions  of  these  world-travelling  papers,  in  addition 
to  the  identical  matter  that  will  appear  almost  simultaneously 
everywhere,  will  no  doubt  have  its  special  matter  and  its  special 
advertisements.  Illustrations  will  be  telegraphed  just  as  well 
as  matter,  and  probably  a  much  greater  use  will  be  made  of 
sketch  and  diagram  than  at  present.  If  the  theory  advanced 
in  this  book,  that  democracy  is  a  transitory  confusion,  be  sound, 
there  will  not  be  one  world  paper  of  this  sort  only — like  Moses' 
serpent  after  its  miraculous  struggle — but  several,  and  as  the 
non-provincial  segregation  of  society  goes  on,  these  various  great 
papers  will  take  on  more  and  more  decided  specific  characteristics, 
and  lose  more  and  more  their  local  references.  They  will  come 
to  have  not  only  a  distinctive  type  of  matter,  a  distinctive  method 
of  thought  and  manner  of  expression,  but  distinctive  funda- 
mental implications,  and  a  distinctive  class  of  writer.  This  dif- 
ference in  character  and  tone  renders  the  advent  of  any  Napole- 
onic master  of  the  newspaper  world  vastly  more  improbable 
than  it  would  otherwise  be.  These  specializing  newspapers 
will,  as  they  find  their  class,  throw  out  manj'  features  that  do 
not  belong  to  that  class.  It  is  highly  probable  that  many  will 
restrict  the  space  devoted  to  news  and  sham  news — that  forge<l 
and  inflated  stuff  made  in  offices  that  bulks  out  the  foreign 
intelligence  of  so  many  English  papers,  for  example.  At  present 
every  paper  contains  a  little  of  everything :  inadequate  sporting 
stuff,  inadequate  financial  stuff,  vague  literary  matter,  volxxmi- 
nous  reports  of  political  vaporings,  because  no  newspaper  is 
quite  sure  of  the  sort  of  readers  it  has — probably  no  daily  news- 
paper has  yet  a  distinctive  sort  of  reader. 

176 


THE    LIFE-HIwSTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

of  the  party  machine  give  us  only  negative  re- 
sults so  long  as  the  gray  social  confusion  contin- 
ues. Subject  to  that  continuance  the  party  ma- 
Many  people,  with  their  minds  inspired  by  the  number  of 
editions  which  evening  papers  pretend  to  publish,  and  do  not, 
incline  to  believe  that  daily  papers  may  presently  give  place 
to  hourly  papers,  each  with  the  last  news  of  the  last  sixty  minutes 
photographically  displayed.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  no  human 
being  wants  that,  and  very  few  are  so  foolish  as  to  think  they 
do ;  the  only  kind  of  news  that  any  sort  of  people  clamors  for 
hot  and  hot  is  financial  and  betting  fluctuations,  lottery  lists 
and  examination  results ;  and  the  elaborated  and  cheapened 
telegraphic  and  telephonic  system  of  the  coming  days,  with 
tapes  (or  phonograph  to  replace  them)  in  every  post-office  and 
nearly  every  private  house,  so  far  from  expanding  this  depart- 
ment, will  probably  sweep  it  out  of  the  papers  altogether.  One 
will  subscribe  to  a  news  agency,  which  will  wire  all  the  stuff 
one  cares  to  have  so  violently  fresh  into  a  phonographic  re- 
corder, perhaps,  in  some  convenient  corner.  There  the  thing 
will  be  in  every  house,  beside  the  barometer,  to  hear  or  ignore. 
With  the  separation  of  that  function  what  is  left  of  the  news- 
paper will  revert  to  one  daily  edition — daily,  I  think,  because 
of  the  power  of  habit  to  make  the  newspaper  the  specific  business 
of  some  definite  moments  in  the  day  ;  the  breakfast  hour,  I  sup- 
po.se,  or  the  "  up-to-town  "  journey  with  most  Englishmen  now. 
Quite  possibly  some  one  will  discover  some  day  that  there  is 
now  machinery  for  folding  and  fastening  a  paper  into  a  form 
that  will  not  inevitably  get  into  the  butter,  or  lead  to  bitterness 
in  a  railway  carriage.  This  pitch  of  development  reached,  I 
incline  to  anticipate  daily  papers  much  more  like  the  Spectator 
in  form  than  these  present  mainsails  of  our  public  life.  They 
will  probably  not  contain  fiction  at  all,  and  poetry  only  rarely, 
because  no  one  but  a  partial  imbecile  wants  these  things  in 
punctual  daily  doses,  and  we  are  anticipating  an  escape  from 
a  period  of  partial  imbecility.  My  own  culture  and  turn  of 
mind,  which  is  probably  akin  to  that  of  a  respectable  mechanic 
of  the  year  2000.  inclines  me  towards  a  daily  paper  that  will 
have,  in  addition  to  its  concentrated  and  absolutely  trustworthy 
daily  news,  full  and  luminous  accounts  of  new  inventions,  new 
theories,  and  new  departures  of  all  sorts  (usually  illustrated), 
witty  and  penetrating  comments  upon  public  affairs,  criticisms 
"  177 


ANTICIPATIONS 

chine  will  probably  continue  as  it  is  at  present, 
and  democratic  states  and  governments  follow  the 
lines  upon  which  they  run  at  the  present  time. 

of  all  sorts  of  things,  representations  of  newly  produced  works 
of  art,  and  an  ample  amount  of  ably  written  controversy  upon 
everything  under  the  sun.  The  correspondence  columns,  in- 
stead of  being  an  exercising  place  for  bores  and  conspicuous 
people  who  are  not  mercenary,  will  be  tJie  most  ample,  the  most 
carefully  collected,  and  the  most  highly  paid  of  all  departments 
in  this  paper.  Personal  paragraphs  will  be  relegated  to  some 
obscure  and  costly  corner  next  to  the  births,  deaths,  and  mar- 
riages. This  paper  will  have,  of  course,  many  pages  of  business 
advertisements,  and  these  will  usually  be  well  worth  looking 
through,  for  the  more  intelligent  editors  of  the  days  to  come 
will  edit  this  department  just  like  anj'  other,  and  classify  tlteir 
advertisements  in  a  descending  scale  of  freshness  and  interest 
that  will  also  be  an  ascending  scale  of  price.  The  advertiser 
who  wants  to  be  an  indecent  bore,  and  vociferate  for  the  ten- 
millionth  time  some  flatulent  falsehood,  about  a  pill,  for  instance, 
will  pay  at  nuisance  rates.  Probably  many  papers  will  refuse 
to  print  nasty  and  distressful  advertisements  about  people's 
insides  at  all.  The  entire  paper  will  be  as  free  from  either  gray- 
ness  or  offensive  stupidity  in  its  advertisement  columns  as  the 
shop  windows  in  Bond  Street  to-day,  and  for  much  the  same 
reason — because  the  people  who  go  that  way  do  not  want  that 
sort  of  thing. 

It  has  been  supposed  that,  since  the  real  income  of  the  news- 
paper is  derived  from  advertisements,  large  advertisers  will 
combine  in  the  future  to  own  papers  confined  to  the  advertise- 
ments of  their  specific  wares.  Some  such  monopoly  is  already 
attempted  ;  several  publishing  firms  own,  or  partially  own,  a 
number  of  provincial  papers,  which  they  adorn  with  strange 
"  Book  Chat "  columns  conspicuously  deficient  in  their  in- 
formation ;  and  a  well-known  cycle-tire  firm  supplies  "  Cycling  " 
columns  that  are  mere  pedestals  for  the  Head-of-King-Charles 
make  of  tire.  Many  quack  firms  publish  and  give  away  annual 
almanacs  replete  with  economical  illustrations,  offensive  details, 
and  bad  jokes.  But  I  venture  to  think,  in  spite  of  such  phe- 
nomena, that  these  suggestions  and  attempts  are  made  with  a 
certain  disregard  of  the  essential  conditions  of  sound  advertise- 
ment.    Sound    advertisement    consists    in    perpetual    alertness 

178 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

Now,  how  will  the  emergent  class  of  capable  men 
presently  begin  to  modify  the  existing  form  of 
government  in  the  ostensibly  democratic  countries 
and  democratic  monarchies?  There  will  be  very 
many  variations  and  modifications  of  the  methods 
of  this  arrival,  an  infinite  complication  of  detailed 
incidents,  but  a  general  proposition  will  be  found  to 
hold  good.  The  suppression  of  the  party  machine 
in  the .  purely  democratic  countries  and  of  the 
official  choice  of  the  rich  and  privileged  rulers  in  the 
more  monarchical  ones,  by  capable  operative  and 
administrative  men  inspired  by  the  belief  in   a 

and  newness,  in  appearance  in  new  places  and  in  new  aspects, 
in  the  constant  access  to  fresh  minds.  The  devotion  of  a  news- 
paper to  the  interest  of  one  particular  make  of  a  commodity 
or  group  of  commodities  will  inevitably  rob  its  advertisement 
department  of  most  of  its  interest  for  the  habitual  readers  of 
the  paper.  That  is  to  say,  the  newspaper  will  fail  in  what  is 
one  of  the  chief  attractions  of  a  good  newspaper.  Moreover, 
such  a  devotion  will  react  upon  all  the  other  matter  in  the  paper, 
because  the  editor  will  need  to  be  constantly  alert  to  exclude 
seditious  reflections  upon  the  Health-Extract-of-Horse-Flesh 
or  Saved-by-Boiling  Jam.  His  sense  of  this  relation  will  taint 
his  self-respect  and  make  him  a  less  capable  editor  than  a  man 
whose  sole  affair  is  to  keep  his  paper  interesting.  To  these  more 
interesting  rival  papers  the  excluded  competitor  will  be  driven, 
and  the  reader  will  follow  in  his  wake.  There  is  little  more 
wisdom  in  the  proprietor  of  an  article  in  popular  demand  buying 
or  creating  a  newspaper  to  contain  all  his  advertisements  than 
in  his  buying  a  coal  pit  for  the  .same  purpo.se.  Such  a  privacy 
of  advertisement  will  never  work,  I  think,  on  a  large  scale ;  it 
is  probably  at  or  near  its  maximum  development  now,  and  this 
anticipation  of  the  advertiser-owned  paper,  like  that  of  hourly 
papers,  and  that  wonderfully  powerful  cosmic  newspaper  syn- 
dicate, is  simply  another  instance  of  prophesying  based  only 
on  a  present  trend,  an  expansion  of  the  obvious,  instead  of  an 
analj'sis  of  determining  forces. 

179 


ANTICIPATIONS 

common  theory  of  social  order,  will  come  about — 
peacefully  and  gradually  as  a  process  of  change, 
or  violently  as  a  revolution — but  inevitably  as  the 
outcome  either  of  the  imminence  or  else  of  the 
disasters  of  war. 

That  all  these  governments  of  confusion  will 
drift  towards  war,  with  a  spacious  impulse  and  a 
final  vehemence  quite  out  of  comparison  greater 
than  the  warlike  impulses  of  former  times,  is  a 
remarkable  but  by  no  means  inexplicable  thing. 
A  tone  of  public  expression,  jealous  and  patriotic 
to  the  danger-point,  is  an  unavoidable  condition 
under  which  democratic  governments  exist.  To  be 
patriotically  quarrelsome  is  imperative  upon  the 
party  machines  that  will  come  to  dominate  the 
democratic  countries.  They  will  not  possess  de- 
tailed and  definite  policies  and  creeds,  because 
there  are  no  longer  any  detailed  and  definite  public 
opinions,  but  they  will,  for  all  that,  require  some 
ostensible  purpose  to  explain  their  cohesion,  some 
hold  upon  the  common  man  that  will  insure  his 
appearance  in  numbers  at  the  polling  -  place  suf- 
ficient to  save  the  government  from  the  raids  of 
small  but  determined  sects.  That  hold  can  be 
only  of  one  sort.  Without  moral  or  religious 
uniformity,  with  material  interests  as  involved 
and  confused  as  a  heap  of  spelicans,  there  remains 
only  one  generality  for  the  politician's  purpose, 
the  ampler  aspect  of  a  man's  egotism,  his  pride 
in  what  he  imagines  to  be  his  particular  kind — 

i8o 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

his  patriotism.  In  every  country  amenable  to 
democratic  influences  there  emerges,  or  will  emerge, 
a  party  machine,  vividly  and  simply  patriotic — 
and  indefinite  upon  the  score  of  any  other  possible 
consideration  between  man  and  man.  This  will 
hold  true,  not  only  of  the  ostensibly  democratic 
states,  but  also  of  such  reconstituted  modern  mon- 
archies as  Italy  and  Germany,  for  they,  too,  for 
all  their  legal  difference,  rest  also  on  the  gray. 
The  party  conflicts  of  the  future  will  turn  very 
largely  on  the  discoverj^  of  the  true  patriot,  on 
the  suspicion  that  the  crown  or  the  machine  in 
possession  is  in  some  more  or  less  occult  way 
traitorous,  and  almost  all  other  matters  of  con- 
tention will  be  shelved  and  allowed  to  stagnate, 
for  fear  of  breaking  the  unity  of  the  national 
mechanism. 

Now,  patriotism  is  not  a  thing  that  flourishes  in 
the  void — one  needs  a  foreigner.  A  national  and 
patriotic  party  is  an  anti-foreign  party ;  the  altar  of 
the  modern  god,  democracy,  will  cry  aloud  for  the 
stranger  men.  Simply  to  keep  in  power,  and  out  of 
no  love  of  mischief,  the  government  or  the  party 
machine  will  have  to  insist  upon  dangers  and  na- 
tional differences,  to  keep  the  voter  to  the  poll  by 
alarms,  seeking  ever  to  taint  the  possible  nucleus 
of  any  competing  organization  with  the  scandal 
of  external  influence.  The  party  press  will  play 
the  watch-dog  and  alia}?-  all  internal  dissensions 
with  its  warning  bay  at  some  adjacent  people, 

i8i 


ANTICIPATIONS 

and  the  adjacent  peoples,  for  reasons  to  be  pres- 
ently expanded,  will  be  continually  more  sensi- 
tive to  such  baying.  Already  one  sees  country 
yelping  at  country  all  over  the  modern  world, 
not  only  in  the  matter  of  warlike  issues,  but  with 
a  note  of  quite  furious  commercial  rivalry — quiet 
furious,  and  indeed  quite  insane,  since  its  ideal 
of  trading  enormously  with  absolutely  ruined  and 
tradeless  foreigners,  exf>orting  everything  and 
importing  nothing,  is  obviously  outside  reason 
altogether.  The  inexorable  doom  of  these  govern- 
ments based  on  the  gray  is  to  foster  enmity  be- 
tween people  and  people.  Even  their  alliances  are 
but  sacrifices  to  intenser  antagonisms.  And  the 
phases  of  the  democratic  sequence  are  simple  and 
sure.  Forced  on  by  a  relentless  competition,  the 
tone  of  the  outcries  will  become  fiercer  and  fiercer ; 
the  occasions  of  excitement,  the  perilous  moments, 
the  ingenuities  of  annoyance,  more  and  more 
dramatic — from  the  mere  emptiness  and  disorder 
of  the  general  mind!  Jealousies  and  anti-foreign 
enactments,  tariff  manipulations  and  commercial 
embitterment,  destructive,  foolish,  exasperating  ob- 
structions that  benefit  no  human  being,  will  min- 
ister to  this  craving  without  completely  allaying 
it.  Nearer,  and  ever  nearer,  the  politicians  of  the 
coming  times  will  force  one  another  towards  the 
verge,  not  because  they  want  to  go  over  it,  not 
because  any  one  wants  to  go  over  it,  but  because 
they  are,  by  their  very  nature,  compelled   to  go 

182 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

that  way,  because  to  go  in  any  other  direction  is 
to  break  up  and  lose  power.  And,  consequently, 
the  final  development  of  the  democratic  system,  so 
far  as  intrinsic  forces  go,  will  be,  not  the  rule  of  the 
boss,  nor  the  rule  of  the  trust,  nor  the  rule  of  the 
newspaper;  no  rule,  indeed,  but  international 
rivalry,  international  competition,  international 
exasperation  and  hostility,  and  at  last — irresistible 
and  overwhelming — the  definite  establishment  of 
the  rule  of  that  most  stern  and  educational  of  all 
masters — War. 

At  this  point  there  opens  a  tempting  path,  and 
along  it  historical  precedents,  like  a  forest  of  notice- 
boards,  urge  us  to  go.  At  the  end  of  the  vista 
poses  the  figure  of  Napoleon,  with  "Caesarism" 
written  beneath  it.  Disregarding  certain  alien  con- 
siderations for  a  time,  assuming  the  free  working 
out  of  democracy  to  its  conclusion,  we  perceive 
that,  in  the  case  of  our  generalized  state,  the  party 
machine,  together  with  the  nation  intrusted  to  it, 
must  necessarily  be  forced  into  passionate  nation- 
al war.  But,  having  blundered  into  war,  the  party 
machine  will  have  an  air  of  having  accomplished 
its  destiny.  A  party  machine  or  a  popular  govern- 
ment is  surely  as  likely  a  thing  to  cause  a  big 
disorder  of  war  and  as  unlikely  a  thing  to  conduct 
it,  as  the  wit  of  man,  working  solely  to  that  end, 
could  ever  have  devised.  I  have  already  pointed 
out  why  we  can  never  expect  an  elected  govern- 
ment of  the  modern  sort  to  be  guided  by  any  far- 

183 


ANTICIPATIONS 

reaching  designs;  it  is  constructed  to  get  office  and 
keep  office,  not  to  do  anything  in  office;  the  con- 
ditions of  its  survival  are  to  keep  appearances  up 
and  taxes  down,*  and  the  care  and  management 
of  army  and  navy  is  quite  outside  its  possibiUties. 
The  mihtary  and  naval  professions  in  our  typical 
modern  state  will  subsist  very  largely  upon  tra- 
dition; the  ostensible  government  will  interfere 
with  rather  than  direct  them,  and  there  will  be  no 
force  in  the  entire  scheme  to  check  the  corrupting 


*  One  striking  illustration  of  the  distinctive  possibilities  of 
democratic  government  came  to  light  during  the  last  term  of 
ofi&ce  of  the  present  patriotic  British  government.  As  a  demon- 
stration of  patriotism  large  sums  of  money  were  voted  annually 
for  the  purpose  of  building  warships,  and  tlie  patriotic  common 
man  paid  the  taxes  gladly  with  a  dream  of  irresistible  naval 
predominance  to  sweeten  the  payment.  But  the  money  was 
not  spent  on  warships ;  only  a  portion  of  it  was  spent,  and  the 
rest  remained  to  make  a  surplus  and  warm  the  heart  of  the  com- 
mon man  in  his  tax-paying  capacity.  This  artful  dodge  was 
repeated  for  several  j'ears ;  the  artful  dodger  is  now  a  peer,  no 
doubt  abjectly  respected,  and  nobody  in  the  most  patriotic  party 
so  far  evolved  is  a  bit  the  worse  for  it.  In  the  organizing  ex- 
pedients hi  all  popular  governments,  as  in  the  prospectuses 
of  unsound  companies,  the  disposition  is  to  exaggerate  the 
nominal  capital  at  the  expense  of  the  working  efficiency.  Demo- 
cratic armies  and  navies  are  always  short,  and  probably  will 
always  be  short,  of  ammunition,  paint,  training,  and  reserve 
stores ;  battalions  and  ships,  since  they  count  as  units,  are  over- 
numerous  and  go  short-handed,  and  democratic  army  reform 
almost  invariably  works  out  to  some  device  for  multiplying 
units  by  fission,  and  counting  men  three  times  instead  of  twice 
in  some  ingenious  and  plausible  way.  And  this  must  be  so, 
because  the  sort  of  men  who  come  inevitably  to  power  under 
democratic  conditions  are  men  trained  by  all  the  conditions  of 
tlieir  lives  to  so  set  app)earances  before  realities  as  at  last  to  be- 
come utterly  incapable  of  realities. 

184 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

influence  of  a  long  peace,  to  insist  upon  adequate 
exercises  for  the  fighting  organization  or  insure 
an  adequate  adaptation  to  the  new  and  perpetual- 
ly changing  possibilities  of  untried  apparatus. 
Incapable  but  confident  and  energetic  persons  hav- 
ing political  influence  will  have  been  permitted  to 
tamper  with  the  various  arms  of  the  service;  the 
equipment  will  be  largely  devised  to  create  an 
impression  of  efiiciency  in  times  of  peace  in  the 
minds  of  the  general  voting  public,  and  the  real- 
ly efiicient  soldiers  will  either  have  fretted  them- 
selves out  of  the  army  or  have  been  driven  out  as 
political  non  -  effectives,  troublesome,  innovating 
persons  anxious  to  spend  money  upon  "fads."- 
So  armed,  the  new  democracy  will  blunder  into 
war,  and  the  opening  stage  of  the  next  great  war 
will  be  the  catastrophic  breakdown  of  the  for- 
mal armies,  shame  and  disasters,  and  a  disorder 
of  conflict  between  more  or  less  equally  matched 
masses  of  stupefied,  scared,  and  infuriated  people. 
Just  how  far  the  thing  may  rise  from  the  value  of 
an  alarming  and  edifying  incident  to  a  universal 
catastrophe  depends  upon  the  special  nature  of 
the  conflict,  but  it  does  not  alter  the  fact  that 
any  considerable  war  is  bound  to  be  a  bitter,  ap- 
palling, highly  educational,  and  constitution- 
shaking  experience  for  the  modern  democratic 
state. 

Now,  foreseeing  this  possibility,  it  is  easy  to  step 
into  the  trap  of  the  Napoleonic  precedent.     One 

185 


ANTICIPATIONS 

hastens  to  foretell  that  either  with  the  pressure  of 
coming  war,  or  in  the  hour  of  defeat,  there  will 
arise  the  man.  He  will  be  strong  in  action,  epi- 
grammatic in  manner,  personally  handsome,  and 
continually  victorious.  He  will  sweep  aside  parlia- 
ments and  demagogues,  carry  the  nation  to  glory, 
reconstruct  it  as  an  empire,  and  hold  it  together 
by  circulating  his  profile  and  organizing  further 
successes.  He  will — I  gather  this  from  chance 
lights  upon  (Contemporary  anticipations — codify 
everything,  rejuvenate  the  papacy,  or,  at  any  rate, 
galvanize  Christianity,  organize  learning  in  meek, 
intriguing  academies  of  little  men,  and  prescribe 
a  wonderful  educational  system.  The  grateful 
nations  will  once  more  deify  a  lucky  and  aggres- 
sive egotism.  .  .  .  And  there  the  vision  loses 
breath. 

Nothing  of  the  sort  is  going  to  happen,  or,  at  any 
rate,  if  it  happens,  it  will  happen  as  an  interlude, 
as  no  necessary  part  in  the  general  progress  of  the 
human  drama.  The  world  is  no  more  to  be  recast 
by  chance  individuals  than  a  city  is  to  be  lit  by 
sky-rockets.  The  purpose  of  things  emerges  upon 
spacious  issues,  and  the  day  of  individual  leaders 
is  past.  The  analogies  and  precedents  that  lead 
one  to  forecast  the  coming  of  military  one-man- 
dominions,  the  coming  of  such  other  parodies  of 
Cajsar's  career  as  that  misapplied,  and  speedily 
futile  chess  champion.  Napoleon  I.  contrived,  are 
false.     They  are  false  because  they  ignore  two 

i86 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

correlated  things :  first,  the  steady  development  of 
a  new  and  quite  unprecedented  educated  class  as 
a  necessary  aspect  of  the  expansion  of  science  and 
mechanism ;  and,  secondly,  the  absolute  revolution 
in  the  art  of  war  tliat  science  and  mechanism  are 
bringing  about.  This  latter  consideration  the  next 
chapter  will  expand,  but  here,  in  the  interests  of 
this  discussion,  we  may  in  general  terms  anticipate 
its  gist.  War  in  the  past  has  been  a  thing  entire- 
ly different  in  its  nature  from  what  war,  with  the 
apparatus  of  the  future,  will  be;  it  lias  been  showy, 
dramatic,  emotional,  and  restricted;  war  in  the 
future  will  be  none  of  these  things.  War  in  the 
past  was  a  thing  of  days  and  heroisms;  battles- 
and  campaigns  rested  in  the  hand  of  the  great 
commander;  he  stood  out  against  the  sky,  pict- 
uresquely on  horseback,  visibl}^  controlling  it  all. 
War  in  the  future  will  be  a  question  of  prepara- 
tion, of  long  3'ears  of  foresight  and  disciplined 
imagination ;  there  will  be  no  decisive  victor3'',  but 
a  vast  diffusion  of  conflict — it  will  depend  less 
and  less  on  controlling  personalities  and  driving 
emotions,  and  more  and  more  upon  the  intelligence 
and  personal  quality  of  a  great  number  of  skilled 
men.  All  this  the  next  chapter  will  expand. 
And  either  before  or  after,  but,  at  any  rate,  in  the 
shadow  of  war,  it  will  become  apparent,  perhaps 
even  suddenly,  that  the  whole  apparatus  of  power 
in  the  country  is  in  the  hands  of  a  new  class  of 
intelligent  and  scientificall3'^  educated  men.     They 

187 


ANTICIPATIONS 

will  probably,  under  the  development  of  warlike 
stresses,  be  discovered — they  will,  discover  them- 
selves— almost  surprisingly  with  roads  and  rail- 
ways, carts  and  cities,  drains,  food  supply,  electrical 
supply,  and  water  supply,  and  with  gims  and  such 
implements  of  destruction  and  intimidation  as 
men  scarcely  dream  of  yet,  gathered  in  their  hands. 
And  they  will  be  discovered,  too,  with  a  growing 
common  consciousness  of  themselves  as  distin- 
guished from  the  gray  confusion,  a  common  pur- 
pose and  implication  that  the  fearless  analysis 
of  science  is  already  bringing  to  light.  They 
will  find  themselves  with  bloodshed  and  horrible 
disasters  ahead,  and  the  material  apparatus  of 
control  entirely  within  their  power.  "Suppose, 
after  all,"  they  will  say,  "we  ignore  these  very 
eloquent  and  showj^  governing  persons  above,  and 
this  very  confused  and  ineffectual  multitude  be- 
low. Suppose  now  we  put  on  the  brakes  and  try 
something  a  little  more  stable  and  orderly.  These 
people  in  possession  have,  of  course,  all  sorts 
of  established  rights  and  prescriptions;  they 
have  squared  the  law  to  their  purpose,  and  the 
constitution  does  not  know  us ;  they  can  get  at  the 
judges,  they  can  get  at  the  newspapers,  they  can 
do  all  sorts  of  things  except  avoid  a  smash — but, 
for  our  part,  we  have  these  really  most  ingenious 
and  subtle  guns.  Suppose,  instead  of  our  turning 
them  and  our  valuable  selves  in  a  fool's  quarrel 
against  the  ingenious  and  subtle  guns  of  other 

i88 


THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF    DEMOCRACY 

men  akin  to  ourselves,  we  use  them  in  the  cause 
of  the  higher  sanity,  and  clear  that  jabbering  war 
tumult  out  of  the  streets."  .  .  .  There  may  be 
no  dramatic  moment  for  the  expression  of  this 
idea,  no  moment  when  the  new  Cromwellism  and 
the  new  Ironsides  will  come  visibly  face  to  face 
with  talk  and  baubles,  flags  and  patriotic  dinner- 
bells;  but,  with  or  without  dramatic  moments,  the 
idea  will  be  expressed  and  acted  upon.  It  will 
be  made  quite  evident  then,  what  is  now,  indeed, 
only  a  pious  opinion — namely,  that  wealth  is,  after 
all,  no  ultimate  power  at  all,  but  only  an  influence 
among  aimless,  police-guarded  men.  So  long  as 
there  is  peace  the  class  of  capable  men  may  be 
mitigated  and  gagged  and  controlled,  and  the 
ostensible  present  order  may  flourish  still  in  the 
hands  of  that  other  class  of  men  which  deals  with 
the  appearances  of  things.  But  as  some  super- 
saturated solution  will  crystallize  out  with  the  mere 
shaking  of  its  beaker,  so  must  the  new  order  of 
men  come  into  visiblj^  organized  existence  through 
the  concussions  of  war.  The  charlatans  can  es- 
cape everything  except  war,  but  to  the  cant  and 
violence  of  nationality,  to  the  sustaining  force 
of  international  hostility,  they  are  ruthlessly  com- 
i^elled  to  cling,  and  what  is  now  their  chief  support 
must  become  at  last  their  destruction.  And  so  it 
is,  I  infer,  that,  whether  violently  as  a  revolution 
or  quietly  and  slowly,  this  gray  confusion  that 
is    democracy    must    pass    away    inevitably   by 

189 


ANTICIPATIONS 

its  own  inherent  conditions,  as  the  twihght 
passes,  as  the  embryonic  confusion  of  the  cocoon 
creature  passes,  into  the  higher  stage,  into  the 
higher  organism,  the  world-state  of  the  coming 
years. 


WAR 


WAR 


IN  shaping  anticipations  of  the  future  of  war 
there  arises  a  certain  difficulty  about  the  point 
of  departure.  One  may  either  begin  upon  such  broad 
issues  as  the  preceding  forecasts  have  opened,  and 
having  determined  now  something  of  the  nature 
of  the  coming  state  and  the  force  of  its  warhke 
inchnation,  proceed  to  speculate  how  this  vast,  ill- 
organized,  four-fold  organism  will  fight;  or  one  may 
set  all  that  matter  aside  for  a  space,  and  having 
regard  chiefly  to  the  continually  more  potent  appli- 
ances physical  science  offers  the  soldier,  we  may 
try  to  develop  a  general  impression  of  theoretically 
thorough  war,  go  from  that  to  the  nature  of  the 
state  most  likely  to  be  superlatively  efficient  in 
such  warfare,  and  so  arrive  at  the  conditions  of 
survival  under  which  these  present  governments 
of  confusion  will  struggle  one  against  the  other. 
The  latter  course  will  be  taken  here.  We  will  deal 
first  of  all  with  war  conducted  for  its  own  sake, 
with  a  model  army,  as  efficient  as  an  imaginative 
training  can  make  it,  and  w4th  a  model  organiza- 
tion for  warfare  of  the  state  behind  it,  and  then 
■»  193 


ANTICIPATIONS 

the  experience  of  the  confused  modern  social  or- 
ganism as  it  is  impelled,  in  an  uncongenial  met- 
amorphosis, towards  this  imperative  and  finally 
unavoidable  efficient  state,  will  come  most  easily 
within  the  scope  of  one's  imagination. 

The  great  change  that  is  working  itself  out  in 
warfare  is  the  same  change  that  is  working  itself 
out  in  the  substance  of  the  social  fabric.  The  es- 
sential change  in  the  social  fabric,  as  we  have  ana- 
lyzed it,  is  the  progressive  supersession  of  the  old 
broad  labor  base  by  elaborately  organized  mech- 
anism, and  the  obsolescence  of  the  once  valid 
and  necessary  distinction  of  gentle  and  simple.  In 
warfare,  as  I  have  already  indicated,  this  takes 
the  form  of  the  progressive  supersession  of  the 
horse  and  the  private  soldier — which  were  the  liv- 
ing and  sole  engines  of  the  old  time — by  machines, 
and  the  obliteration  of  the  old  distinction  between 
leaders,  who  pranced  in  a  conspicuousl3'^  danger- 
ous and  encouraging  way  into  the  picturesque 
incidents  of  battle,  and  the  led,  who  cheered  and 
charged  and  filled  the  ditches  and  were  slaugh- 
tered in  a  wholesale  dramatic  manner.  The  old 
war  was  a  matter  of  long,  dreary  marches,  great 
hardships  of  campaigning,  but  also  of  heroic  con- 
clusive moments.  Long  periods  of  campings — 
almost  always  with  an  outbreak  of  pestilence — 
of  marchings  and  retreats,  much  crude  business 
of  feeding  and  forage,  culminated  at  last,  with 
an  effect  of  infinite  relief,   in  an  hour  or  so  of 

194 


WAR 

"battle."  The  battle  was  always  a  very  intimate, 
tumultuous  affair;  the  men  were  flung  at  one  an- 
other in  vast,  excited  masses,  in  living,  fighting  ma- 
chines, as  it  were;  spears  or  bayonets  flashed;  one 
side  or  the  other  ceased  to  prolong  the  climax,  and 
the  thing  was  over.  The  beaten  force  crumpled  as 
a  whole,  and  the  victors  as  a  whole  pressed  upon  it. 
Cavalry  with  slashing  sabres  marked  the  crown- 
ing point  of  victory.  In  the  later  stages  of  the 
old  warfare  musketry  volleys  were  added  to  the 
physical  impact  of  the  contending  regiments,  and 
at  last  cannon,  as  a  quite  accessory  method  of 
breaking  these  masses  of  men.  So  you  "  gave  bat-, 
tie"  to  and  defeated  your  enem37^'s  forces  where- 
ever  encountered,  and  when  you  reached  your 
objective  in  his  capital  the  war  was  done.  .  .  . 
The  new  war  will  probably  have  none  of  these 
features  of  the  old  system  of  fighting. 

The  revolution  that  is  in  progress  from  the  old 
war  to  a  new  war,  different  in  its  entire  nature 
from  the  old,  is  marked  primarily  by  the  steady 
progress  in  range  and  efficiencjT^  of  the  rifle  and  of 
the  field-gun — and  more  particularly  of  the  rifle. 
The  rifle  develops  persistently  from  a  clumsy  imple- 
ment, that  any  clown  may  learn  to  use  in  half  a  day, 
towards  a  very  intricate  mechanism,  easily  put  out 
of  order  and  easily  misused,  but  of  the  most  extraor- 
dinary possibilities  in  the  hands  of  men  of  courage, 
character,  and  high  intelligence.  Its  precision  at 
long  range  has  made  the  business  of  its  care,  load- 

T95 


ANTICIPATIONS 

ing,  and  aim  subsidiary  to  the  far  more  intricate 
matter  of  its  use  in  relation  to  the  contour  of  the 
ground  within  its  reach.  Even  its  elaboration  as 
an  instrument  is  probably  still  incomplete.  One 
can  conceive  it  provided  in  the  future  with  cross- 
thread  telescopic  sights,  the  focusing  of  which,  cor- 
rected by  some  ingenious  use  of  hygroscopic  ma- 
terial, might  even  find  the  range,  and  so  enable  it 
to  be  used  with  assurance  up  to  a  mile  or  more. 
It  will  probably  also  take  on  some  of  the  charac- 
ters of  the  machine-gun.  It  will  be  used  either  for 
single  shots  or  to  quiver  and  send  a  spray  of  al- 
most simultaneous  bullets  out  of  a  magazine  even- 
ly and  certainly  over  any  small  area  the  rifleman 
thinks  advisable.  It  will  probably  be  portable 
by  one  man,  but  there  is  no  reason  really,  except 
the  bayonet  tradition,  the  demands  of  which  may 
be  met  in  other  ways,  why  it  should  be  the  in- 
strument of  one  sole  man.  It  will,  just  as  prob- 
ably, be  slung,  with  its  ammunition  and  equip- 
ment, upon  bicycle  wheels,  and  be  the  common 
care  of  two  or  more  associated  soldiers.  Equipped 
with  such  a  weapon,  a  single  couple  of  marksmen 
even,  by  reason  of  smokeless  powder  and  carefully 
chosen  cover,  might  make  themselves  practically 
invisible,  and  capable  of  surprising,  stopping,  and 
destroying  a  visible  enemy  in  quite  consider- 
able numbers  who  blundered  within  a  mile  of 
them.  And  a  series  of  such  groups  of  marksmen 
so  arranged  as  to  cover  the  arrival  of  reliefs,  provi- 

196 


WAR 

sions,  and  fresh  ammunition  from  the  rear,  might 
hold  out  against  any  visible  attack  for  an  indefi- 
nite period,  unless  the  ground  they  occupied  was 
searched  very  ably  and  subtly  by  some  sort  of 
gun  having  a  range  in  excess  of  their  rifle  fire. 
If  the  ground  they  occupied  were  to  be  properly 
tunnelled  and  trenched,  even  that  might  not  avail, 
and  there  would  be  nothing  for  it  but  to  attack 
them  by  an  advance  under  cover  either  of  the 
night  or  of  darkness  caused  by  smoke-shells,  or  by 
the  burning  of  cover  about  their  position.  Even 
then  they  might  be  deadly  with  magazine  fire  at 
close  quarters.  Save  for  their  liability  to  such 
attacks,  a  few  hundreds  of  such  men  could  hold 
positions  of  a  quite  vast  extent,  and  a  few  thou- 
sand might  hold  a  frontier.  Assuredly  a  mere 
handful  of  such  men  could  stop  the  most  multitu- 
dinous attack  or  cover  the  most  disorderly  retreat 
in  the  world,  and  even  when  some  ingenious,  dar- 
ing, and  lucky  night  assault  had  at  last  ejected 
them  from  a  position,  dawn  would  simply  restore 
to  them  the  prospect  of  reconstituting  in  new 
positions  their  enormous  advantage  of  defence. 

The  only  really  effective  and  final  defeat  such  an 
attenuated  force  of  marksmen  could  sustain  would 
be  from  the  slow  and  circumspect  advance  upon 
it  of  a  similar  force  of  superior  marksmen,  creep- 
ing forward  under  cover  of  night  or  of  smoke- 
shells  and  fire,  digging  pits  during  the  snatches 
of  cessation  obtained  in  this  way,  and  so  coming 

197 


ANTICIPATIONS 

nearer  and  nearer  and  getting  a  completer  and 
completer  mastery  of  the  defender's  ground  until 
the  approach  of  the  defender's  reliefs,  food,  and 
fresh  ammimition  ceased  to  be  possible.  There- 
upon there  would  be  nothing  for  it  but  either  sur- 
render or  a  bolt  in  the  night  to  positions  in  the 
rear,  a  bolt  that  might  be  hotly  follo\^'ed  if  it  were 
deferred  too  late. 

Probably  between  contiguous  nations  that  have 
mastered  the  art  of  war,  instead  of  the  pouring 
clouds  of  cavalry  of  the  old  dispensation,*  this 

*  Even  along  such  vast  frontiers  as  the  Russian  and  Austrian, 
for  example,  where  M.  Bloch  anticipates  war  will  be  begun  with 
an  invasion  of  clouds  of  Russian  cavalry  and  great  cavalry 
battles,  I  am  inclined  to  think  this  deadlock  of  essentially  de- 
fensive marksmen  may  still  be  the  more  probable  thing.  Small 
bodies  of  cyclist  riflemen  would  rush  forward  to  meet  the  ad- 
vancing clouds  of  cavalry,  would  drop  into  invisible  ambushes, 
and  announce  their  presence — in  unknown  numbers  —  with 
carefully  aimed  shots  difficult  to  locate.  A  small  number  of 
such  men  could  always  begin  their  fight  with  a  surprise  at  the 
most  advantageous  moment,  and  they  would  be  able  to  make 
themselves  very  deadly  against  a  comparatively  powerful  frontal 
attack.  If  at  last  the  attack  were  driven  home  before  supports 
came  up  to  the  defenders,  they  would  still  be  able  to  cycle  away, 
comparatively  immixne.  To  attempt  even  very  wide  flanking 
movements  against  such  a  snatched  position  would  be  simply 
to  run  risks  of  blundering  upon  similar  ambushes.  The  clouds 
of  cavalry  would  have  to  spread  into  thin  lines  at  last  and  go 
forward  with  the  rifle.  Invading  clouds  of  cyclists  would  be  in 
no  better  case.  A  conflict  of  cyclists  against  cyclists  over  a 
country  too  spacious  for  unbroken  lines  would  still,  I  think, 
leave  the  struggle  essentially  unchanged.  The  advance  of 
small  unsupported  bodies  would  be  the  wildest  and  most  un- 
profitable adventure ;  every  advance  would  have  to  be  made 
behind  a  screen  of  scouts,  and,  given  a  practical  equality  in  the 
numbers  and  manhood  of  the  two  forces,  these  screens  would 
speedily  become  simply  very  attenuated  lines. 

198 


WAR 

will  be  the  opening  phase  of  the  struggle,  a  vast 
duel  all  along  the  frontier  between  groups  of  skill- 
ed marksmen,  continually  being  relieved  and  re- 
freshed from  the  rear.  For  a  time  quite  possibly 
there  will  be  no  definite  army  here  or  there;  there 
will  be  no  controllable  battle;  there  will  be  no  great 
general  in  the  field  at  all.  But  somewhere  far 
in  the  rear  the  central  organizer  will  sit  at  the 
telephonic  centre  of  his  vast  front,  and  he  will 
strengthen  here  and  feed  there,  and  watch,  watch 
perpetually,  the  pressure,  the  incessant,  remorseless 
pressure,  that  is  seeking  to  wear  down  his  counter- 
vailing thrust.  Behind  the  thin  firing  line  that  is 
actually  engaged,  the  country  for  many  miles  will 
be  rapidly  cleared  and  devoted  to  the  business 
of  war;  big  machines  will  be  at  work  making 
second,  third,  and  fourth  lines  of  trenches  that 
may  be  needed  if  presently  the  firing  line  is  forced 
back,  spreading  out  transverse  paths  for  the  swift 
lateral  movement  of  the  cyclists,  who  will  be  in 
perpetual  alertness  to  relieve  sudden  local  press- 
ures, and  all  along  those  great  motor  roads  our 
first  Anticipations  sketched,  there  will  be  a  vast 
and  rapid  shifting  to  and  fro  of  big  and  very  long 
range  guns.  These  guns  will  probably  be  fought 
with  the  help  of  balloons.  The  latter  will  hang 
above  the  firing  line  all  along  the  front,  incessantly 
ascending  and  withdrawn;  they  will  be  contin- 
ually determining  the  distribution  of  the  antago- 
nist's forces,  directing  the  fire  of  continually  shift- 

199 


ANTICIPATIONS 

ing  great  guns  upon  the  apparatus  and  supports 
in  the  rear  of  his  fighting  hne, , forecasting  his 
night  plans  and  seeking  some  tactical  or  strategic 
weakness  in  that  sinewy  line  of  battle. 

It  will  be  evident  that  such  warfare  as  this  in- 
evitable precision  of  gun  and  rifle  forces  upon 
humanity  will  become  less  and  less  dramatic  as 
a  whole,  more  and  more  as  a  whole  a  monstrous 
thrust  and  pressure  of  people  against  people.  No 
dramatic  little  general  spouting  his  troops  into 
the  proper  hysterics  for  charging,  no  prancing 
merely  brave  officers,  no  reckless  gallantry  or 
invincible  stubbornness  of  men  will  suffice.  For 
the  commander-in-chief  on  a  picturesque  horse 
Sentimentally  watching  his  "boys"  march  past 
to  death  or  glory  in  battalions,  there  will  have  to 
be  a  loyal  staff  of  men,  w  orking  simply,  earnestly, 
and  subtly  to  keep  the  front  tight;  and  at  the 
front  every  little  isolated  company  of  men  will  have 
to  be  a  council  of  war,  a  little  conspiracy  under 
the  able  man  its  captain,  as  keen  and  individual 
as  a  football  team,  conspiring  against  the  scarcely 
seen  company  of  the  foe  over  yonder.  The  battalion 
commander  will  be  replaced  in  effect  by  the  or- 
ganizer of  the  balloons  and  guns  by  which  his 
few  hundreds  of  splendid  individuals  will  be  guid- 
ed and  reinforced.  In  the  place  of  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  more  or  less  drunken  and  untrained 
young  men  marching  into  battle — muddle-headed, 
sentimental,  dangerous,  and  futile  hobbledehoys — 

200 


WAR 

there  will  be  thousands  of  sober  men  braced  up 
to  their  highest  possibilities,  intensely  doing  their 
best ;  in  the  place  of  charging  battalions,  shatter- 
ing impacts  of  squadrons  and  wide  harvest  fields 
of  death,  there  will  be  hundreds  of  little  rifle 
battles  fought  up  to  the  hilt,  gallant  dashes  here, 
night  surprises  there,  the  sudden,  sinister,  faint 
gleam  of  nocturnal  baj'-onets,  brilliant  guesses 
that  will  drop  catastrophic  shell  and  death  over 
hills  and  forests  suddenly  into  carelessly  exposed 
masses  of  men.  For  eight  miles  on  either  side  of 
the  firing-lines  —  whose  fire  will  probably  never 
altogether  die  away  while  the  war  lasts — men  will 
live  and  eat  and  sleep  under  the  imminence  of  un- ' 
anticipated  death.  .  .  .  Such  will  be  the  opening 
phase  of  the  war  that  is  speedily  to  come. 

And  behind  the  thin  firing  line  on  either  side  a 
vast  multitude  of  people  will  be  at  work;  indeed, 
the  whole  mass  of  the  efficients  in  the  state  will 
have  to  be  at  work,  and  most  of  them  will  be  simply 
at  the  same  work  or  similar  work  to  that  done  in 
peace  time — only  now  as  combatants  upon  the  lines 
of  communication.  The  organized  staffs  of  the  big 
road  managements,  now  become  a  part  of  the  mili- 
tary scheme,  will  be  deporting  women  and  chil- 
dren and  feeble  people  and  bringing  up  supplies 
and  supports;  the  doctors  will  be  dropping  from 
their  civil  duties  into  pre-appointed  official  places, 
directing  the  feeding  and  treatment  of  the  shifting 
masses  of  people  and  guarding  the  valuable  man- 

201 


ANTICIPATIONS 

hood  of  the  fighting  apparatus  most  sedulously 
from  disease;*  the  engineers  will  he  intrenching 
and  bringing  up  a  vast  variety  of  complicated 
and  ingenious  apparatus  designed  to  surprise  and 
inconvenience  the  enemy  in  novel  ways;  the 
dealers  in  food  and  clothing,  the  manufacturers 
of  all  sorts  of  necessary  stuff,  will  be  converted  by 
the  mere  declaration  of  war  into  public  servants ; 
a  practical  realization  of  socialistic  conceptions 
will  quite  inevitably  be  forced  upon  the  fighting 
state.  The  state  that  has  not  incorporated  with 
its  fighting  organization  all  its  able-bodied  man- 
hood and  all  its  material  substance,  its  roads,  ve- 
hicles, engines,  foundries,  and  all  its  resources  of 
food  and  clothing ;  the  state  which  at  the  outbreak 
of  war  has  to  bargain  with  railway  and  shipping 
companies,  replace  experienced  station-masters  by 
inexperienced  ofiicers,  and  haggle  against  alien 
interests  for  every  sort  of  supply,  will  be  at  an 
overwhelming  disadvantage  against  a  state  which 
has  emerged  from  the  social  confusion  of  the  pres- 
ent time,  got  rid  of  every  vestige  of  our  present 
distinction  between  ofiScial  and  governed,  and 
organized  every  element  in  its  being. 

I  imagine  that  in  this  ideal  war,  as  compared 

*  So  far,  pestilence  has  been  a  feature  of  almost  every  sustained 
war  in  the  world,  but  there  is  really  no  reason  whatever  why  it 
should  be  so.  There  is  no  reason,  indeed,  why  a  soldier  upon 
active  service  on  the  victorious  side  should  go  without  a  night's 
rest  or  miss  a  meal.  If  he  does,  there  is  muddle  and  want  of 
foresight  somewhere,  and  that  our  hypothesis  excludes. 

202 


WAR 

with  the  war  of  to-day,  there  will  be  a  very  con- 
siderable restriction  of  the  rights  of  the  non-com- 
batant.    A  large  part  of  existing  international  law 
involves  a  curious  implication,  a  distinction  between 
the  belligerent  government  and  its  accredited  agents 
in  warfare  and  the  general  body  of  its  subjects. 
There  is  a   dispasition    to  treat   the  belligerent 
government,  in  spite  of  the  democratic  status  of 
many  states,  as  not  fully  representing  its  people, 
to  establish  a  sort  of  world-citizenship  in  the  com- 
mon mass  outside  the  official  and  military  class. 
Protection  of  the  non-combatant  and  his  property 
comes  at  last — in  theory,  at  least — within  a  meas- 
urable  distance   of   notice   boards:  "Combatants 
are  requested  to  keep  off  the  grass."     This  dis- 
position I  ascribe  to  a  recognition  of  that  obsoles- 
cence and  inadequacy  of  the  formal  organization 
of  states  which  has    already  been  discussed  in 
this  book.     It  was  a  disposition  that  was  strongest, 
perhaps,  in  the  earliest  decades  of  the  nineteenth 
century,   and  stronger  now  than,  in  the  steady 
and  irresistible  course  of  strenuous  and  universal 
military  preparation,  it  is  likely  to  be  in  the  fut- 
ure.    In   our   imaginary  twentieth-century  state, 
organized  primarily  for  war,  this  tendency  to  dif- 
ferentiate a  non-combatant  mass  in  the  fighting 
state  will  certainly  not  be  respected ;  the  state  will 
be  organized  as  a  whole  to  fight  as  a  whole;  it  will 
have  triumphantly  asserted  the  universal  duty  of 
its  citizens.     The  military  force  will  be  a  much  am- 

203 


ANTICIPATIONS 

pier  organization  than  the  "army"  qI  to-day;  it 
will  be  not  simply  the  fists,  but  the  body  and  brain 
of  the  land.  The  whole  apparatus,  the  whole  staff 
engaged  in  internal  communication,  for  example, 
may  conceivably  not  be  state  property  and  a  state 
service,  but  if  it  is  not  it  will  assuredly  be  as  a 
whole  organized  as  a  volunteer  force,  that  may 
instantly  become  a  part  of  the  machinery  of  de- 
fence or  aggression  at  the  outbreak  of  war.*  The 
men  may  very  conceivably  not  have  a  uniform, 
for  military  .uniforms  are  simply  one  aspect  of 
this  curious  and  transitory  phase  of  restriction, 
but  they  will  have  their  orders  and  their  universal 
plan.  As  the  bells  ring  and  the  recording  tele- 
phones click  into  every  house  the  news  that  war 
has  come,  there  will  be  no  running  to  and  fro  upon 
the  pubhc  ways,  no  bawling  upon  the  moving 
platforms  of  the  central  urban  nuclei,  no  crowds 
of  silly,  useless,  able-bodied  people  gaping  at  in- 
flammatory transparencies  outside  the  offices  of 
sensational  papers  because  the  egregious  idiots 
in  control  of  affairs  have  found  them  no  better 
employment.  Every  man  will  be  soberly  and 
intelligently   setting   about  the  particular   thing 


•  Lady  Maud  RoUeston,  in  her  very  interesting  Yeoman 
Service,  complains  of  the  Boers  killing  an  engine-driver  during 
an  attack  on  a  train  at  Kroonstadt,  "  which  was,"  she  writes, 
"  an  abominable  action,  as  he  is,  in  law,  a  non-combatant." 
The  implicit  assumption  of  this  complaint  would  cover  the  en- 
gineers of  an  ironclad  or  the  guides  of  a  night  attack — every- 
body, in  fact,  who  was  not  positively  weapon  in  hand. 

204 


WAR 

he  has  to  do — even  the  rich  share-holding  sort  of 
person,  the  hereditary  mortgager  of  society,  will 
be  given  something  to  do,  and  if  he  has  learned 
nothing  else  he  will  serve  to  tie  up  parcels  of  am- 
munition or  pack  army  sausage.  Very  probably 
the  best  of  such  people  and  of  the  speculative  class 
will  have  qualified  as  -cyclist  marksmen  for  the 
front;  some  of  them  may  even  have  devoted  the 
leisure  of  peace  to  military  studies  and  may  be 
prepared  with  novel  weapons.  Recruiting  among 
the  working  classes — or,  more  properly  speaking, 
among  the  people  of  the  abyss — will  have  dwindled 
to  the  vanishing  point;  people  who  are  no  good 
for  peace  purposes  are  not  likely  to  be  any  good 
in  such  a  grave  and  complicated  business  as  mod- 
em war.  The  spontaneous  traffic  of  the  roads  in 
peace  will  fall  now  into  two  streams,  one  of  wom- 
en and  children  coming  quietly  and  comfortably 
out  of  danger,  the  other  of  men  and  material  going 
up  to  the  front.  There  will  be  no  panics,  no  hard- 
ships, because  everything  will  have  been  amply 
prearranged — we  are  dealing  with  an  ideal  state. 
Quietly  and  tremendously  that  state  will  have 
gripped  its  adversary  and  tightened  its  muscles — 
that  is  all. 

Now  the  strategy  of  this  new  sort  of  war  in  its 
opening  phase  will  consist  mainly  in  very  rapid 
movements  of  guns  and  men  behind  that  thin 
screen  of  marksmen,  in  order  to  deal  suddenly  and 
unexpectedly  some    forcible    blow,  to    snatch  at 

205 


ANTICIPATIONS 

some  position  into  which  guns  and  men  may  be 
thrust  to  outflank  and  turn  the  advantage  of  the 
ground  against  some  portion  of  the  enemy's  line. 
The  game  will  be  largely  to  crowd  and  crumple 
that  line,  to  stretch  it  over  an  arc  to  the  break- 
ing point,  to  secure  a  position  from  which  to  shell 
and  destroy  its  supports  and  provisions,  and  to 
capture  or  destroy  its  guns  and  apparatus,  and 
so  tear  it  away  from  some  town  or  arsenal  it  has 
covered.  And  a  factor  of  primary  importance  in 
this  warfare,  because  of  the  importance  of  seeing 
the  board,  a  factor  which  will  be  enormously  stim- 
ulated to  develop  in  the  future,  will  be  the  aerial 
factor.  Already  we  have  seen  the  captive  balloon 
as  an  incidental  accessory  of  considerable  impor- 
tance even  in  the  wild  country  warfare  of  South 
Africa.  In  the  warfare  that  will  go  on  in  the 
highly  organized  European  states  of  the  opening 
century,  the  special  military  balloon  used  in  con- 
junction with  guns,  conceivably  of  small  caliber 
but  of  enormous  length  and  range,  will  play  a 
part  of  quite  primary  importance.  These  guns 
will  be  carried  on  vast  mechanical  carriages, 
possibly  with  wheels  of  such  a  size  as  will  enable 
them  to  traverse  almost  all  sorts  of  ground.*    The 

*  Experiments  will  probably  be  made  in  the  direction  of  ar- 
mored guns,  armored  search-light  carriages,  and  armored 
shelters  for  men,  that  will  admit  of  being  pushed  forward  over 
riiie-swept  ground.  To  such  possibilities,  to  possibilities  even 
of  a  sort  of  land  ironciad,  my  inductive  reason  incUnes ;  the 
armored  train  seems,  indeed,  a  distinct  beginning  of  this  sort 

206 


WAR 

aeronauts,  provided  with  large-scale  maps  of  the 
hostile  country,  will  mark  down  to  the  gunners 
below  the  precise  point  upon  which  to  direct  their 
fire,  and  over  hill  and  dale  the  shell  will  fly — ten 
miles  it  may  be — to  its  billet,  camp,  massing  night 
attack,  or  advancing  gun. 

Great  multitudes  of  balloons  will  be  the  Argus 
eyes  of  the  entire  military  organism,  stalked  eyes 
with  a  telephonic  nerve  in  each  stalk,  and  at  night 
they  will  sweep  the  country  with  search-lights  and 
come  soaring  before  the  wind  with  hanging  flares. 
Certainly  they  will  be  steerable.  Moreover,  when 
the  wind  admits,  there  will  be  freely  moving,  steer- 
able  balloons  wagging  little  flags  to  their  friends 
below.  And  so  far  as  the  resources  of  the  men  on 
the  ground  go,  the  balloons  will  be  almost  invulner- 
able. The  mere  perforation  of  balloons  with  shot 
does  them  little  harm,  and  the  possibilit3'^  of  hit- 
ting a  balloon  that  is  drifting  about  at  a  practically 
unascertainable  distance  and  height  so  preciselj^ 
as  to  blow  it  to  pieces  with  a  timed  shell,  and  to 
do  this  in  the  little  time  before  it  is  able  to  give 
simple  and  precise  instructions  as  to  your  range 

of  thing,  but  my  imagination  proffers  nothing  but  a  vision  of 
wheels  smashed  by  shells,  iron  tortoises  gallantly  rushed  by 
hidden  men,  and  unhappy  marksmen  and  engineers  being  shot 
at  as  they  bolt  from  some  such  monster  overset.  The  fact  of 
it  is,  I  detest  and  fear  these  thick,  slow,  essentially  defensive 
methods,  either  for  land  or  sea  fighting.  I  believe  invincibly 
that  the  side  that  can  go  fastest  and  hit  hardest  will  always  win, 
with  or  without  or  in  spite  of  massive  defences,  and  no  ingenuity 
in  devising  the  massive  defence  will  shake  that  belief. 

207 


ANTICIPATIONS 

and  f>osition  to  the  unseen  gunners  it  directs,  is 
certainly  one  of  the  most  difficult  and  trying  un- 
dertakings for  an  artilleryman  that  one  can  well 
imagine.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  many 
considerations  against  a  successful  attack  on  bal- 
loons from  the  ground  will  enormously  stimulate 
enterprise  and  invention  in  the  direction  of  dirig- 
ible aerial  devices  that  can  fight.  Few  people,  I 
fancy,  who  know  the  work  of  Langley,  Lilienthal, 
Pilcher,  Maxim,  and  Chanute  but  will  be  inclined 
to  believe  that  long  before  the  year  A.D.  2000, 
and  very  probably  before  1950,  a  successful  aero- 
plane will  have  soared  and  come  home  safe  and 
sound.  Directly  that  is  accomplished  the  new  in- 
vention will  be  most  assuredly  applied  to  war. 

The  nature  of  the  things  that  will  ultimately 
fight  in  the  sky  is  a  matter  for  curious  speculation. 
We  begin  with  the  captive  balloon.  Against  that 
the  navigable  balloon  will  presently  operate.  I 
am  inclined  to  think  the  practicable  navigable 
balloon  will  be  first  attained  by  the  use  of  a  device 
already  employed  by  nature  in  the  swimming- 
bladder  of  fishes.  This  is  a  closed  gas-bag  that 
can  be  contracted  or  expanded.  If  a  gas-bag  of 
thin,  strong,  practically  impervious  substance 
could  be  inclosed  in  a  net  of  closely  interlaced 
fibres  (interlaced,  for  example,  on  the  pattern  of 
the  muscles  of  the  bladder  in  mammals),  the  ends 
of  these  fibres  might  be  wound  and  unwound, 
and  the  effect  of  contractility  attained.    A  row 

208 


WAR 

of  such  contractile  balloons,  hung  over  a  long  car 
which  was  horizontally  expanded  into  wings, 
would  not  only  allow  that  car  to  rise  and  fall  at 
will,  but  if  the  balloon  at  one  end  were  contracted 
and  that  at  the  other  end  expanded,  and  the  in- 
termediate ones  allowed  to  assume  intermediate 
conditions,  the  former  end  would  drop,  the  ex- 
panded wings  would  be  brought  into  a  slanting 
condition  over  a  smaller  area  of  supporting  air,  and 
the  whole  apparatus  would  tend  to  glide  down- 
ward in  that  direction.  The  projection  of  a  small 
vertical  plane  upon  either  side  would  make  the 
gliding  mass  rotate  in  a  descending  spiral,  and  so 
we  have  all  the  elements  of  a  controllable  flight. 
Such  an  affair  would  be  difficult  to  overset.  It 
would  be  able  to  beat  up  even  in  a  fair  wind,  and 
then  it  would  be  able  to  contract  its  bladders  and 
fall  down  a  long  slant  in  any  direction.  From 
some  such  crude  beginning  a  form  like  a  soaring, 
elongated,  flat-brimmed  hat  might  grow,  and  the 
possibilities  of  adding  an  engine-driven  screw  are 
obvious  enough. 

It  is  difficult  to  see  how  such  a  contrivance  could 
carry  guns  of  any  caliber  unless  they  fired  from  the 
rear  in  the  line  of  flight.  The  problem  of  recoil 
becomes  a  very  difficult  one  in  aerial  tactics.  It 
would  probably  have  at  most  a  small  machine-gun 
or  so,  which  might  fire  an  explosive  shell  at  the 
balloons  of  the  enemy,  or  Idll  their  aeronauts  with 
distributed  bullets.     The  thing  would  be  a  sort  of 

14  209 


ANTICIPATIONS 

air-shark,  and  one  may  even  venture  to  picture 
something  of  the  struggle  the  dead-locked  marks- 
men of  1950,  lying  warily  in  their  rifle-pits,  will 
see. 

One  conceives  them  at  first,  each  little  hole  with 
its  watchful,  well  -  equipped  couple  of  assassins, 
turning  up  their  eyes  in  expectation.  The  wind 
is  with  our  enemy,  and  his  captive  balloons  have 
been  disagreeably  overhead  all  through  the  hot 
morning.  His  big  guns  have  suddenly  become 
nervously  active.  Then,  a  little  murmur  along 
the  pits  and  trenches,  and  from  somewhere  over 
behind  us,  this  air-shark  drives  up  the  sky.  The 
enemy's  balloons  splutter  a  little,  retract,  and  go 
rushing  down,  and  we  send  a  spray  of  bullets  as 
they  drop.  Then  against  our  aerostat,  and  with 
the  wind  driving  them  clean  overhead  of  us,  come 
the  antagonistic  flying-machines.  I  incline  to 
imagine  there  will  be  a  steel  prow  with  a  cutting 
edge  at  either  end  of  the  sort  of  aerostat  I  foresee, 
and  conceivably  this  aerial  ram  will  be  the  most 
important  weapon  of  the  affair.  When  operating 
against  balloons,  such  a  fighting-machine  will 
rush  up  the  air  as  swiftly  as  possible,  and  then, 
with  a  rapid  contraction  of  its  bladders,  fling  itself 
like  a  knife  at  the  sinking  war-balloon  of  the  foe. 
Down,  down,  down,  through  a  vast,  alert  tension  of 
flight,  down  it  will  swoop,  and,  if  its  stoop  is  suc- 
cessful, slash  explosively  at  last  through  a  suffo- 
cating moment.     Rifles  will  crack,  ropes  tear  and 

210 


WAR 

snap ;  there  will  be  a  rending  and  shouting,  a  great 
thud  of  liberated  gas,  and  perhaps  a  flare.  Quite 
certainly  those  flying  machines  will  carry  folded 
parachutes,  and  the  last  phase  of  many  a  struggle 
will  be  the  desperate  leap  of  the  aeronauts  with 
these  in  hand,  to  snatch  one  last  chance  of  life 
out  of  a  mass  of  crumpling,  fallen  wreckage. 

But  in  such  a  fight  between  flying-machine  and 
flying-machine  as  we  are  trying  to  picture,  it  will 
be  a  fight  of  hawks,  complicated  by  bullets  and 
little  shells.  They  will  rush  up  and  up  to  get  the 
pitch  of  one  another,  imtil  the  aeronauts  sob  and 
sicken  in  the  rarefied  air,  and  the  blood  comes  to 
eyes  and  nails.  The  marksmen  below  will  strain 
at  last,  eyes  under  hands,  to  see  the  circling  battle 
that  dwindles  in  the  zenith.  Then,  perhaps,  a  wild, 
adventurous  dropping  of  one  close  beneath  the 
other,  an  attempt  to  stoop,  the  sudden  splutter  of 
guns,  a  tilting  up  or  down,  a  disengagement. 
What  will  have  happened?  One  combatant,  per- 
haps, ^\all  heel  lamely  earthward,  dropping,  drop- 
ping, with  half  its  bladders  burst  or  shot  away, 
the  other  circles  down  in  pursuit.  .  .  .  "What 
are  they  doing?"  Our  marksmen  will  snatch  at 
their  field-glasses,  tremulously  anxious,  "Is  that 
a  white  flag  or  no?  .  .  .  If  they  drop  now  we 
have  'em!" 

But  the  duel  will  be  the  rarer  thing.  In  any 
affair  of  ramming  there  is  an  enormous  advantage 
for  the  side  that  can  contrive,  anj^where  in  the 

211 


ANTICIPATIONS 

field  of  action,  to  set  two  vessels  at  one.  The 
mere  ascent  of  one  flying-ram  from  one  side  will 
assuredly  slip  the  leashes  of  two  on  the  other, 
imtil  the  manceuvring  squadrons  may  be  as 
thick  as  starlings  in  October.  They  will  wheel 
and  mount,  they  will  spread  and  close,  there  will 
be  elaborate  manoeuvres  for  the  advantage  of  the 
wind,  there  will  be  sudden  drops  to  the  shelter  of 
intrenched  guns.  The  actual  impact  of  battle 
will  be  an  affair  of  moments.  They  will  be  awful 
moments,  but  not  more  terrible,  not  more  exacting 
of  manhood  than  the  moments  that  will  come 
to  men  when  there  is  —  and  it  has  not  as  yet 
happened  on  this  earth  —  equal  fighting  between 
properly  manned  and  equipped  ironclads  at  sea. 
(And  the  well-bred  young  gentlemen  of  means 
who  are  privileged  to  officer  the  British  army  now- 
adays will  be  no  more  good  at  this  sort  of  thing 
than  they  are  at  controversial  theology  or  electrical 
engineering,  or  anything  else  that  demands  a 
well-exercised  brain.) 

Once  the  command  of  the  air  is  obtained  by  one 
of  the  contending  armies,  the  war  must  become  a 
conflict  between  a  seeing  host  and  one  that  is  blind. 
The  victor  in  that  aerial  struggle  will  tower  with 
pitilessly  watchful  eyes  over  his  adversary,  will 
concentrate  his  guns  and  all  his  strength  unob- 
served, will  mark  all  his  adversary's  roads  and  com- 
munications, and  sweep  them  with  sudden  incredi- 
ble disasters  of  shot  and  shell.     The  moral  effect 

212 


WAR 

of  this  predominance  will  be  enormous.  All  over 
the  losing  country,  not  simply  at  his  frontier  but 
everywhere,  the  victor  will  soar.  Everybody, 
everywhere,  will  be  perpetually  and  constantly 
looking  up,  with  a  sense  of  loss  and  insecurity, 
with  a  vague  stress  of  painful  anticipations.  By 
day  the  victor's  aeroplanes  will  sweep  down  upon 
the  apparatus  of  all  sorts  in  the  adversary's  rear, 
and  will  drop  explosives  and  incendiary  matters 
upon  them,*  so  that  no  apparatus  or  camp  or 
shelter  will  any  longer  be  safe.  At  night  his  high, 
floating  search-lights  will  go  to  and  fro  and  discover 
and  check  every  desperate  attempt  to  relieve  or 
feed  the  exhausted  marksmen  of  the  fighting  line. 
The  phase  of  tension  will  pass,  that  weakening 
opposition  will  give,  and  the  war  from  a  state  of 
mutual  pressure  and  petty  combat  will  develop 
into  the  collapse  of  the  defensive  lines.  A  general 
advance  will  occur  under  the  aerial  van;  ironclad 
road  fighting-machines  may,  perhaps,  play  a  con- 
siderable part  in  this,  and  the  enemy's  line  of  marks- 
men will  be  driven  back  or  starved  into  surrender, 
or  broken  up  and  hunted  down.  As  the  superiority 
of  the  attack  becomes  week  by  week  more  and 
more  evident,  its  assaults  will  become  more  dash- 
ing and  far-reaching.  Under  the  moonlight  and 
the  watching  balloons  there  will  be  swift,  noiseless 
rushes  of  cycles,  precipitate  dismounts,  and  the 

*  Or,  in  deference  to  the  rules  of  war,  fire  them  out  of  gvins  of 
trivial  carrying  power. 

213 


ANTICIPATIONS 

never-to-be-quite  abandoned  bayonet  will  play 
its  part.  And  now  men  on  the  losing  side  will 
thank  God  for  the  reprieve  of  a  pitiless  wind,  for 
lightning,  thunder,  and  rain,  for  any  elemental 
disorder  that  will  for  a  moment  lift  the  descending 
scale  1  Then,  under  banks  of  fog  and  cloud,  the 
victorious  advance  will  pause  and  grow  peeringly 
watchful  and  nervous,  and  mud-stained,  desperate 
men  will  go  splashing  forward  into  an  elemental 
blackness,  rain  or  snow  like  a  benediction  on  their 
faces,  blessing  the  primordial  savagery  of  nature 
that  can  still  set  aside  the  wisest  devices  of  men, 
and  give  the  unthrifty  one  last,  desperate  chance 
to  get  their  own  again  or  die. 

Such  adventures  may  rescue  pride  and  honor, 
may  cause  momentary  dismay  in  the  victor  and 
palliate  disaster,  but  they  will  not  turn  back  the  ad- 
vance of  the  victors,  or  twist  inferiority  into  victory. 
Presently  the  advance  will  resume.  With  that 
advance  the  phase  of  indecisive  contest  will  have 
ended,  and  the  second  phase  of  the  new  war,  the 
business  of  forcing  submission,  will  begin.  This 
should  be  more  easy  in  the  future  even  than  it  has 
proved  in  the  past,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  central 
governments  are  now  elusive,  and  small  bodies  of 
rifle-armed  guerillas  far  more  formidable  than  ever 
before.  It  will  probably  be  brought  about  in  a 
civilized  country  by  the  seizure  of  the  vital  aj>- 
paratus  of  the  urban  regions — the  water  supply, 
the  generating  stations  for  electricity  (which  will 

214 


WAR 

supply  all  the  heat  and  warmth  of  the  land),  and 
the  chief  ways  used  in  food  distribution.  Through 
these  expedients,  even  while  the  formal  war  is 
still  in  progress,  an  irresistible  pressure  upon  a 
local  population  will  be  possible,  and  it  will  be 
easy  to  subjugate  or  to  create  afresh  local  authori- 
ties, who  will  secure  the  invader  from  any  danger  of 
a  guerilla  warfare  upon  his  rear.  Through  that 
sort  of  an  expedient  an  even  very  obdurate  loser 
will  be  got  down  to  submission,  area  by  area.  With 
the  destruction  of  its  military  apparatus  and  the 
prospective  loss  of  its  water  and  food  supply, 
however,  the  defeated  civilized  state  will  probably 
be  willing  to  seek  terms  as  a  whole,  and  bring " 
the  war  to  a  formal  close. 

In  cases  where,  instead  of  contiguous  frontiers, 
the  combatants  are  separated  by  the  sea,  the  aerial 
struggle  will  probably  be  preceded  or  accompanied 
by  a  struggle  for  the  command  of  the  sea.  Of  this 
warfare  there  have  been  many  forecasts.  In  this, 
as  in  all  the  warfare  of  the  coming  time,  imagina- 
tive foresight,  a  perpetual  alteration  of  tactics,  a 
perpetual  production  of  unanticipated  devices,  will 
count  enormously.  Other  things  being  equal,  vic- 
tory will  rest  with  the  force  mentally  most  active. 
What  type  of  ship  may  chance  to  be  prevalent 
when  the  great  naval  war  comes  is  hard  guessing, 
but  I  incline  to  think  that  the  naval  architects 
of  the  ablest  peoples  will  concentrate  more  and 
more  upon  speed,  and  upon  range  and  penetration, 

215 


ANTICIPATIONS 

and,  above  all,  upon  precision  of  fire.  I  seem  to 
see  a  light  type  of  iron-clad,  armored  thickly  only 
over  its  engines  and  magazines,  murderously 
equipped,  and  with  a  ram — as  alert  and  deadly 
as  a  striking  snake.  In  the  battles  of  the  open 
she  will  have  little  to  fear  from  the  slow,  fumbling 
treacheries  of  the  submarine;  she  will  take  as 
little  heed  of  the  chance  of  a  torpedo  as  a  bare- 
footed man  in  battle  does  of  the  chance  of  a  fallen 
dagger  in  his  path.  Unless  I  know  nothing  of 
my  own  blood,  the  English  and  Americans  will 
prefer  to  catch  their  enemies  in  ugly  weather  or  at 
night,  and  then  they  will  fight  to  ram.  The 
struggle  on  the  high  seas  between  any  two  naval 
powers  (except,  perhaps,  the  English  and  Amer- 
ican, who  have  both  quite  unparalleled  oppor- 
tunities for  coaling)  will  not  last  more  than  a  week 
or  so.  One  or  other  force  will  be  destroyed  at  sea, 
driven  into  its  ports  and  blockaded  there,  or  cut 
off  from  its  supply  of  coal  (or  other  force-generator), 
and  hunted  down  to  fight  or  surrender.  An  inferior 
fleet  that  tries  to  keep  elusively  at  sea  will  always 
find  a  superior  fleet  between  itself  and  coal,  and 
will  either  have  to  fight  at  once  or  be  shot  into 
surrender  as  it  lies  helpless  on  the  water.  Some 
commerce-destroying  enterprise  on  the  part  of 
the  loser  may  go  on,  but  I  think  the  possibilities 
of  that  sort  of  thing  are  greatly  exaggerated. 
The  world  grows  smaller  and  smaller,  the  telegraph 
and  telephone  go  everywhere,  wireless  telegraphy 

216 


WAR 

opens  wider  and  wider  possibilities  to  the  imagina- 
tion, and  how  the  commerce-destroyer  is  to  go  on 
for  long  without  being  marked  down,  headed  ofif, 
cut  off  from  coal,  and  forced  to  fight  or  surrender, 
I  do  not  see.  The  commerce-destroyer  will  have  a 
very  short  run ;  it  will  have  to  be  an  exceptionally 
good  and  costly  ship  in  the  first  place,  it  will  be 
finally  sunk  or  captured,  and  altogether  I  do  not  see 
how  that  sort  of  thing  will  pay  when  once  the  com- 
mand of  the  sea  is  assured.  A  few  weeks  will 
carry  the  effective  frontier  of  the  stronger  power 
up  to  the  coast-line  of  the  weaker,  and  permit  of 
the  secure  resumption  of  the  over-sea  trade  of  the 
former.  And  then  will  open  a  second  phase  of 
naval  warfare,  in  which  the  submarine  may  play 
a  larger  part. 

I  must  confess  that  my  imagination,  in  spite  even 
of  spurring,  refuses  to  see  any  sort  of  submarine 
doing  anything  but  suffocate  its  crew  and  founder 
at  sea.  It  must  involve  physical  inconvenience 
of  the  most  demoralizing  sort  simply  to  be  in  one 
for  any  length  of  time.  A  first-rate  man  who  has 
been  breathing  carbonic  acid  and  oil  vapor  under 
a  pressure  of  four  atmospheres  becomes  presentlj^ 
a  second-rate  man.  Imagine  yourself  in  a  sub- 
marine that  has  ventured  a  few  miles  out  of  port; 
imagine  that  you  have  headache  and  nausea, 
and  that  some  ship  of  the  Cobra  type  is  flashing 
itself  and  its  search-lights  about  whenever  you 
come  up  to  the  surface,  and  promptly  tearing  down 

217 


ANTICIPATIONS 

on  your  descending  bubbles  with  a  ram,  trailing 
perhaps  a  tail  of  grapples  or  a  net  as  well.  Even 
if  you  get  their  boat,  these  nicely  aerated  men 
you  are  fighting  know  they  have  a  four  to  one 
chance  of  living;  while  for  your  submarine  to  be 
"got"  is  certain  death.  You  may,  of  course, 
throw  out  a  torpedo  or  so,  with  as  much  chance  of 
hitting  vitally  as  you  would  have  if  you  were  blind- 
folded, turned  roimd  three  times,  and  told  to  fire 
revolver-shots  at  a  charging  elephant.  The  possi- 
bility of  sweeping  for  a  submarine  with  a  seine 
would  be  vividly  present  in  the  minds  of  a  sub- 
marine crew.  If  you  are  near  shore  you  will  prob- 
ably be  near  rocks — an  unpleasant  complication 
in  a  hurried  dive.  There  would,  probably,  very 
soon  be  boats  out,  too,  seeking  with  a  machine-gun 
or  pompom  for  a  chance  at  your  occasionally 
emergent  conning-tower.  In  no  way  can  a  sub- 
marine be  more  than  purblind;  it  will  be,  in  fact, 
practically  blind.  Given  a  derelict  ironclad  on  a 
still  night  within  sight  of  land,  a  carefully  handled 
submarine  might  succeed  in  groping  its  way  to  it 
and  destroying  it;  but  then  it  would  be  much 
better  to  attack  such  a  vessel  and  capture  it  boldly 
with  a  few  desperate  men  on  a  tug.  At  the  utmost, 
the  submarine  will  be  used  in  narrow  waters,  in 
rivers,  or  to  fluster  or  destroy  ships  in  harbor,  or 
with  poor-spirited  crews — that  is  to  say,  it  will 
simply  be  an  added  power  in  the  hands  of  the 
nation  that  is  predominant  at  sea.     And,   even 

218 


WAR 

then,  it  can  be  merely  destructive,  while  a  sane 
and  high-spirited  fighter  will  always  be  dissatis- 
fied if,  with  an  indisputable  superiority  of  force,  he 
fails  to  take.* 

No;  the  naval  warfare  of  the  future  is  for  light, 
swift  ships,  almost  recklessly  not  defensive,  and 
with  splendid  guns  and  gunners.  They  will  hit 
hard  and  ram,  and  warfare  which  is  taking  to 
cover  on  land  will  abandon  it  at  sea.  And  the 
captain,  and  the  engineer,  and  the  gunner  will 
have  to  be  all  of  the  same  sort  of  men:  capable, 
headlong  men,  with  brains  and  no  ascertainable 
social  position.  They  will  differ  from  the  officers 
of  the  British  navy  in  the  fact  that  the  whole  male 
sex  of  the  nation  will  have  been  ransacked  to  get 
them.  The  incredible  stupidity  that  closes  all 
but  a  menial  position  in  the  British  navy  to  the 
sons  of  those  who  cannot  afford  to  pay  a  hundred 
a  year  for  them  for  some  years,  necessarily  brings 
the  individual  quality  of  the  British  naval  ofl&cer 
below  the  highest  possible,  quite  apart  from  the 
deficiencies  that  must  exist  on  account  of  the 
badness  of  secondary  education  in  England.  The 
British  naval  officer  and  engineer  are  not  made 

*  A  curious  result  might  very  possibly  follow  a  success  of 
submarines  on  the  part  of  a  naval  power  finally  found  to  be 
weaker  and  defeated.  The  victorious  power  might  decide  that 
a  narrow  sea  was  no  longer,  under  the  new  conditions,  a  com- 
fortable boundary  line,  and  might  insist  on  marking  its  bound- 
ary along  the  high  -  water  mark  of  its  adversary's  adjacent 
coasts. 

219 


ANTICIPATIONS 

the  best  of,  good  as  they  are;  indisputably  they 
might  be  infinitely  better,  both  in  quality  and  train- 
ing. The  smaller  German  navy,  probably,  has  an 
ampler  pick  of  men  relatively;  is  far  better  educated, 
less  confident,  and  more  strenuous.  But  the  ab- 
stract navy  I  am  here  writing  of  will  be  superior 
to  either  of  these,  and,  like  the  American,  in  the 
absence  of  any  distinction  between  officers  and 
engineers.     The  officer  will  be  an  engineer. 

The  military  advantages  of  the  command  of  the 
sea  will  probably  be  greater  in  the  future  than  they 
have  been  in  the  past.  A  fleet  with  aerial  supports 
would  be  able  to  descend  upon  any  portion  of  the 
adversary's  coast  it  chose,  and  to  dominate  the 
country  inland  for  several  miles  with  its  gim-fire. 
All  the  enemy's  sea-coast  towns  would  be  at  its 
mercy.  It  would  be  able  to  effect  landing  and  send 
raids  of  cyclist-marksmen  inland,  whenever  a  weak 
point  was  discovered.  Landings  will  be  enor- 
mously easier  than  they  have  ever  been  before. 
Once  a  wedge  of  marksmen  has  been  driven  in- 
land they  would  have  all  the  military  advantages 
of  the  defence  when  it  came  to  eject  them.  They 
might,  for  example,  encircle  and  block  some  forti- 
fied post,  and  force  costly  and  disastrous  attempts 
to  relieve  it.  The  defensive  country  would  stand 
at  bay,  tethered  against  any  effective  counter- 
blow, keeping  guns,  supplies,  and  men  in  per- 
petual and  distressing  movement  to  and  fro  along 
its  sea-frontiers.     Its  soldiers  would  get  uncertain 

220 


WAR 

rest,  irregular  feeding,  unhealthy  conditions  of 
all  sorts  in  hastily  made  camps.  The  attacking 
fleet  would  divide  and  re-unite,  break  up  and  vanish, 
amazingly  reappear.  The  longer  the  defender's 
coast  the  more  wretched  his  lot.  Never  before  in 
the  world's  history  was  the  command  of  the  sea 
worth  what  it  is  now.  But  the  command  of  the 
sea  is,  after  all,  like  military  predominance  on 
land,  to  be  insured  only  by  superiority  of  equip- 
ment in  the  hands  of  a  certain  type  of  man,  a  type 
of  man  that  it  becomes  more  and  more  impossible 
to  improvise,  that  a  country  must  live  for  through 
many  years,  and  that  no  country  on  earth  at 
present  can  be  said  to  be  doing  its  best  possible  to 
make. 

All  this  elaboration  of  warfare  lengthens  the 
scale  between  theoretical  efficiency  and  absolute 
unpreparedness.  There  was  a  time  when  any 
tribe  that  had  men  and  spears  was  ready  for  war, 
and  any  tribe  that  had  some  cunning  or  emotion 
at  command  might  hope  to  discount  any  little 
disparity  in  numbers  between  itself  and  its  neigh- 
bor. Luck  and  stubbornness  and  the  incalculable 
counted  for  much;  it  was  half  the  battle  not  to 
know  you  were  beaten,  and  it  is  so  still.  Even 
to-day,  a  great  nation,  it  seems,  may  still  make 
its  army  the  plaything  of  its  gentlefolk,  abandon 
important  military  appointments  to  feminine  in- 
trigue, and  trust  cheerfully  to  the  homesickness 
and  essential  modesty  of  its  influential  people,  and 

221 


ANTICIPATIONS 

the  simpler  patriotism  of  its  colonial  dependencies 
when  it  comes  at  last  to  the  bloody-  and  wearisome 
business  of  "muddling  through."  But  these 
days  of  the  happy-go-lucky  optimist  are  near  their 
end.  War  is  being  drawn  into  the  field  of  the 
exact  sciences.  Every  additional  weapon,  every 
new  complication  of  the  art  of  war,  intensifies 
the  need  of  deliberate  preparation,  and  darkens 
the  outlook  of  a  nation  of  amateurs.  Warfare  in 
the  future,  on  sea  or  land  alike,  will  be  much  more 
one-sided  than  it  has  ever  been  in  the  past — much 
more  of  a  foregone  conclusion.  Save  for  national 
limacy,  it  will  be  brought  about  by  the  side  that 
will  win,  and  because  that  side  knows  that  it  will 
win.  More  and  more  it  will  have  the  quality 
of  surprise,  of  pitiless  revelation.  Instead  of  the 
see -saw,  the  bickering  interchange  of  battles  of 
the  old  time,  will  come  swiftly  and  amazingly 
blow,  and  blow,  and  blow — no  pause,  no  time  for 
recovery,  disasters  cumulative  and  irreparable. 

The  fight  will  never  be  in  practice  between  equal 
sides,  never  be  that  theoretical  deadlock  we  have 
sketched,  but  a  fight  between  the  more  efficient  and 
the  less  efficient,  between  the  more  inventive  and 
the  more  traditional.  While  the  victors,  disciplined 
and  grimly  intent,  full  of  the  sombre  yet  glorious 
delight  of  a  grave  thing  well  done,  will,  without 
shouting  or  confusion,  be  fighting  like  one  great 
national  body,  the  losers  will  be  taking  that  pitiless 
exposure  of  helplessness  in  such  a  manner  as  their 

222 


WAR 

natural  culture  and  character  may  determine. 
War  for  the  losing  side  will  be  an  imspeakable, 
pitiable  business.  There  will  be  first  of  all  the 
coming  of  the  war,  the  wave  of  excitement,  the 
belligerent  shouting  of  the  unemployed  inefficients, 
the  flag-waving,  the  secret  doubts,  the  eagerness 
for  hopeful  news,  the  impatience  of  the  warning 
voice.  I  seem  to  see,  almost  as  if  he  were  symbolic, 
the  gray  old  general — the  general  who  learned  his 
art  of  war  away  in  the  vanished  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, the  altogether  too  elderly  general  with  his 
epaulettes  and  decorations,  his  uniform  that  has 
still  its  historical  value,  his  spurs  and  his  sword — 
riding  along  on  his  obsolete  horse,  by  the  side  of 
his  doomed  column.  Above  all  things  he  is  a 
gentleman.  And  the  column  looks  at  him  loving- 
ly with  its  countless  boys'  faces,  and  the  boys' 
eyes  are  infinitely  trustful,  for  he  has  won  battles 
in  the  old  time.  They  will  believe  in  him  to  the 
end.  They  have  been  brought  up  in  their  schools 
to  believe  in  him  and  his  class,  their  mothers  have 
mingled  respect  for  the  gentlefolk  with  the  simple 
doctrines  of  their  faith,  their  first  lesson  on  en- 
tering the  army  was  the  salute.  The  "smart" 
helmets  His  Majesty,  or  some  such  unqualified 
person  chose  for  them,  lie  hotly  on  their  young 
brows,  and  over  their  shoulders  slope  their  obso- 
lete, carelessly-sighted  guns.  Tramp,  tramp,  they 
march,  doing  what  they  have  been  told  to  do, 
incapable  of  doing  an3H:hing  they  have  not  been 

223 


ANTICIPATIONS 

told  to  do,  trustful  and  pitiful,  marching  to  wounds 
and  disease,  hunger,  hardship,  and  death.  They 
know  nothing  of  what  they  are  going  to  meet, 
nothing  of  what  they  will  have  to  do;  religion 
and  the  ratepayer  and  the  rights  of  the  parent 
working  through  the  instrumentality  of  the  best 
club  in  the  world  have  kept  their  souls  and  minds, 
if  not  untainted,  at  least  only  harmlessly  veneered 
with  the  thinnest  sham  of  training  or  knowledge. 
Tramp,  tramp,  they  go,  boys  who  will  never  be 
men,  rejoicing  patriotically  in  the  nation  that  has 
thus  sent  them  forth,  badly  armed,  badly  clothed, 
badly  led,  to  be  killed  in  some  avoidable  quarrel  by 
men  unseen.  And  beside  them,  an  absolute  stranger 
to  them,  a  stranger  even  in  habits  of  speech  and 
thought,  and  at  anj^  rate  to  be  shot  with  them  fairly 
and  squarely,  marches  the  subaltern — the  son  of 
the  school-burking,  share-holding  class — a  slightly 
taller  sort  of  boy,  as  ill-taught  as  they  are  in  all 
that  concerns  the  realities  of  life,  ignorant  of  how 
to  get  food,  how  to  get  water,  how  to  keep  fever 
down  and  strength  up,  ignorant  of  his  practical 
equality  with  the  men  beside  him,  carefully  trained 
under  a  clerical  headmaster  to  use  a  crib,  play 
cricket  rather  nicely,  look  all  right  whatever  hap- 
pens, believe  in  his  gentility,  and  avoid  talking 
"shop."  .  .  .  The  major  you  see  is  a  man  of 
the  world,  and  very  pleasantly  meets  the  gray 
general's  eye.  He  is,  one  may  remark  by  the  way, 
something  of  an  army  reformer,  without  offence, 

224 


WAR 

of  course,  to  the  court  people  or  the  government 
people.  His  prospects — if  only  he  were  not  going 
to  be  shot — are  brilliant  enough.  He  has  written 
quite  cleverly  on  the  question  of  recruiting,  and 
advocated  as  much  as  twopence  more  a  day  and 
billiard-rooms  under  the  chaplain's  control;  he  has 
invented  a  military  bicycle  with  a  wheel  of  solid 
iron  that  can  be  used  as  a  shield;  and  a  war  cor- 
respondent, and,  indeed,  any  one  who  writes  even 
the  most  casual  and  irresponsible  article  on  military 
questions,  is  a  person  worth  his  cultivating.  He 
is  the  very  life  and  soul  of  army  reform,  as  it  is 
known  to  the  governments  of  the  gray — that  is 
to  say,  army  reform  without  a  single  step  towards 
a  social  revolution. 

So  the  gentlemanly  old  general — the  polished 
drover  to  the  shambles — rides,  and  his  doomed 
column  march  by,  in  this  vision  that  haunts  my 
mind. 

I  cannot  foresee  what  such  a  force  will  even 
attempt  to  do  against  modern  weapons.  Nothing- 
can  happen  but  the  needless  and  most  wasteful 
and  pitiful  killing  of  these  poor  lads,  who  make 
up  the  infantry  battalions,  the  main  mass  of  all 
the  European  armies  of  to-day,  whenever  the3^ 
come  against  a  sanely  organized  army.  There  is 
nowhere  they  can  come  in;  there  is  nothing  they 
can  do.  The  scattered,  invisible  marksmen  with 
their  supporting  guns  will  shatter  their  masses, 
pick  them  oflf  individually,  cover  their  hne  of  re- 

15  225 


ANTICIPATIONS 

treat  and  force  them  into  wholesale  surrenders. 
It  will  be  more  like  herding  sheep  than  actual 
fighting.  Yet  the  bitterest  and  cruellest  things 
will  have  to  happen,  thousands  and  thousands  of 
poor  boys  will  be  smashed  in  all  sorts  of  dreadful 
ways  and  given  over  to  every  conceivable  form  of 
avoidable  hardship  and  painful  disease,  before  the 
obvious  fact  that  war  is  no  longer  a  business  for 
half-trained  lads  in  uniform,  led  by  parson-bred 
sixth-form  boys  and  men  of  pleasure  and  old  men, 
but  an  exhaustive  demand  upon  very  carefully 
educated  adults  for  the  most  strenuous  best  that 
is  in  them,  will  get  its  practical  recognition.* 


*  There  comes  to  hand  as  I  correct  these  proofs  a  very  typical 
illustration  of  the  atmosphere  of  really  almost  imbecile  patronage 
in  which  the  British  private  soldier  lives.  It  is  a  circular  from 
some  one  at  Lydd — some  one  who  evidently  cannot  even  write 
English — but  who  is  nevertheless  begging  for  an  iron  hut  in 
which  to  inflict  lessons  on  our  soldiers.  "  At  present,"  says 
this  circiUar,  "  it  is  pretty  to  see  in  the  home  a  group  of  gunners 
busily  occupied  in  wool-work  or  learning  basket-making,  while 
one  of  their  number  sings  or  recites,  and  others  are  playing 
games  or  letter-writing,  but  even  quite  recently  the  members 
of  the  Bible  Reading  Union  and  one  of  the  ladies  might  have 
been  seen  painfully  crowded  behind  screens,  choosing  the 
'  Golden  Text '  with  lowered  voices,  and  trying  to  pray  '  with- 
out distraction,'  while  at  the  other  end  of  the  room  men  were 
having  supper,  and  half-way  down  a  dozen  Irish  militia  (who 
don't  care  to  read,  but  are  keen  on  a  story)  were  gathered  round 
another  lady,  who  was  telling  them  an  amusing  temperance 
tale,  trying  to  speak  so  that  the  Bible  readers  should  not  hear 
her  and  yet  that  the  Leinsters  should  was  a  difficulty,  but  when 
the  Irishmen  begged  for  a  song — difficulty  became  impossibility, 
and  their  friend  had  to  say,  '  No.'  Yet  this  is  just  the  double 
work  required  in  soldiers'  homes,  and  above  all  at  Lydd,  where 
there  is  so  little  safe  amusement  to  be  had  in  camp,  and  none 

226 


WAR 

Well,  in  the  ampler  prospect  even  this  haunting 
tragedy  of  innumerable  avoidable  deaths  is  but  an 
incidental  thing.  They  die,  and  their  troubles  are 
over.  The  larger  fact,  after  all,  is  the  inexorable 
tendency  in  things  to  make  a  soldier  a  skilled  and 
educated  man,  and  to  link  him,  in  sympathy  and 
organization,  with  the  engineer  and  the  doctor, 
and  all  the  continually  developing  mass  of  scien- 

in  the  village."  These  poor  youngsters  go  from  this  "  safe 
amusement"  under  the  loving  care  of  "  lady  workers,"  this  life 
of  limitation,  make-believe  and  spiritual  servitude,  that  a  self- 
respecting  negro  would  find  intolerable,  into  a  warfare  that  ex- 
acts initiative  and  a  freely  acting  intelligence  from  all  who 
take  part  in  it,  under  the  bitterest  penalties  of  shame  and  death. 
What  can  you  expect  of  them?  And  how  can  you  expect  any 
men  of  capacity  and  energy,  any  men  even  of  mediocre  self- 
respect  to  knowingly  place  themselves  under  the  tutelage  of  the 
sort  of  people  who  dominate  these  organized  degradations?  I 
am  amazed  the  army  gets  so  many  capable  recruits  as  it  does. 
And  while  the  private  lives  under  these  conditions  the  would- 
be  capable  ofl&cer  stifles  amid  equally  impossible  surroundings. 
He  must  associate  with  the  uneducated  products  of  the  public 
schools  and  listen  to  their  chatter  about  the  "  sports  "  that  delight 
them,  suffer  social  indignities  from  the  "  army  woman,"  worry 
and  waste  money  on  needless  clothes,  and  expect  to  end  by  being 
shamed  or  killed  under  some  unfairly  promoted  incapable. 
Nothing  illustrates  the  intellectual  blankness  of  the  British 
army  better  than  its  absolute  dearth  of  mihtary  literature.  No 
one  would  dream  of  gaining  any  profit  by  writing  or  publishing 
a  book  upon  such  a  subject,  for  example,  as  mountain  warfare 
in  England,  because  not  a  dozen  British  officers  would  have  the 
sense  to  buy  such  a  book,  and  yet  the  British  army  is  continually 
getting  into  scrapes  in  mountain  districts.  A  few  unselfish  men 
like  Major  Peech  find  time  to  write  an  essay  or  so,  and  that  is 
all.  On  the  other  hand,  I  find  no  fewer  than  five  works  in  French 
on  this  subject  in  MM.  Chapelet  &  Cie.'s  list  alone.  On  guerilla 
warfare,  again,  and  after  two  years  of  South  Africa,  while  there 
is  nothing  in  English  but  some  scattered  papers  by  Dr.  T.  Miller 
Maguire,  there  are  nearly  a  dozen  good  books  in  French.     As  a 

227 


ANTICIPATIONS 

tifically  educated  men  that  the  advance  of  science 
and  mechanism  is  producing.  We  are  deaUng 
with  the  inter-play  of  two  world-wide  forces,  that 
work  through  distinctive  and  contrasted  ten- 
dencies to  a  common  end.  We  have  the  force  of 
invention  insistent  upon  a  progress  of  the  peace 
organization,  which  tends  on  the  one  hand  to 
throw   out   great   useless   masses   of   people,    the 

supplement  to  these  facts  is  the  spectacle  of  the  officers  of  the 
Guards  telegraphing  to  Sir  Thomas  Lipton,  on  the  occasion  of 
the  defeat  of  his  Shamrock  II.,  "Hard  luck.  Be  of  good  cheer. 
Brigade  of  Guards  wish  you  every  success."  This  is  not  the 
fooUsh  enthusiasm  of  one  or  two  subalterns ;  it  is  collective. 
They  followed  that  yacht  race  with  emotion.  It  was  a  really 
important  thing  to  them.  No  doubt  the  whole  mess  was  in  a 
state  of  extreme  excitement.  How  can  capable  and  active  men 
be  expected  to  live  and  work  within  this  upper  and  that  nether 
millstone?  The  British  army  not  only  does  not  attract  am- 
bitious, energetic  men — it  repels  them.  I  must  confess  that  I 
see  no  hope  either  in  the  rulers,  the  traditions,  or  the  manhood 
of  the  British  regular  army  to  forecast  its  escape  from  the  bog 
of  ignorance  and  negligence  in  which  it  wallows.  Far  better 
than  any  projected  reforms  would  it  be  to  let  the  existing 
army  severely  alone,  to  cease  to  recruit  for  it,  to  retain  (at  the 
ex|)ense  of  its  officers,  assisted,  perhaps,  by  subscriptions  from 
ascendant  people  like  Sir  Thomas  Lipton)  its  messes,  its  uniforms, 
its  games,  bands,  entertainments,  and  splendid  memories  as  an 
appendage  of  the  court,  and  to  create,  in  absolute  independence 
of  it,  battalions  and  batteries  of  efficient  professional  soldiers, 
without  social  prestige  or  social  distinctions,  without  bands, 
dress  uniforms,  colors,  chaplains,  or  honorary  colonels,  and  to 
embody  these  as  a  real  marching  army  perpetually  en  route 
throughout  the  empire,  a  reading,  thinking,  experimenting  army 
under  an  absolutely  distinct  war  office,  with  its  own  colleges,  de- 
pots, and  training  camps  perpetually  ready  for  war.  I  cannot 
help  but  think  that  if  a  hint  were  taken  from  the  Turbinia  syn- 
dicate a  few  enterprising  persons  of  means  and  intelligence 
might  do  much  by  private  experiment  to  supplement  and  re- 
place the  existing  state  of  affairs. 

228 


WAR 

people  of  the  abj^ss,  and  on  the  other  hand  to 
develop  a  sort  of  adiposity  of  functionless  wealthy, 
a  speculative  elephantiasis,  and  to  promote  the 
develo|)ment  of  a  new  social  order  of  efficients, 
only  very  painfully  and  slowly,  amid  these  grow- 
ing and  yet  disintegrating  masses.  And  on  the 
other  hand  we  have  the  warlike  drift  of  such  a 
social  body,  the  inevitable  intensification  of  inter- 
national animosities  in  such  a  body,  the  absolute 
determination  evident  in  the  scheme  of  things 
to  smash  such  a  body,  to  smash  it  just  as  far  as 
it  is  such  a  body,  under  the  hammer  of  war, 
that  must  finally  bring  about,  rapidly  and  under 
pressure,  the  same  result  as  that  to  which  the 
peaceful  evolution  slowly  tends.  While  we  are  as 
yet  only  thinking  of  a  physiological  struggle,  of 
complex  reactions  and  slow  absorptions,  comes 
war  with  the  surgeon's  knife.  War  comes  to  sim- 
plify the  issue  and  line  out  the  thing  with  knife- 
like cuts. 

The  law  that  dominates  the  future  is  glaringly 
plain.  A  people  must  develop  and  consolidate  its 
educated  efficient  classes  or  be  beaten  in  war  and 
give  way  upon  all  points  where  its  interests  conflict 
with  the  interests  of  more  capable  people.  It  must 
foster  and  accelerate  that  natural  segregation, 
which  has  been  discussed  in  the  third  and  fourth 
chapters  of  these  Anticipations,  or  perish.  The 
war  of  the  coming  time  will  really  be  won  in 
schools   and  colleges  and   universities,  wherever 

229 


ANTICIPATIONS 

men  write  and  read  and  talk  together.  The  nation 
that  produces  in  the  near  future  the  largest  pro- 
portional development  of  educated  and  intelligent 
engineers  and  agriculturists,  of  doctors,  school- 
masters, professional  soldiers,  and  intellectually 
active  people  of  all  sorts;  the  nation  that  most 
resolutely  picks  over,  educates,  sterilizes,  exports, 
or  poisons  its  people  of  the  abyss;  the  nation 
that  succeeds  most  subtly  in  checking  gambling 
and  the  moral  decay  of  women  and  homes  that 
gambling  inevitably  entails;  the  nation  that  by 
wise  interventions,  death  duties  and  the  like,  con- 
trives to  expropriate  and  extinguish  incompetent 
rich  families  while  leaving  individual  ambitions 
free;  the  nation,  in  a  word,  that  turns  the  greatest 
proportion  of  its  irresponsible  adiposity  into  social 
muscle,  will  certainly  be  the  nation  that  will  be 
the  most  powerful  in  warfare  as  in  peace,  will 
certainly  be  the  ascendant  or  dominant  nation 
before  the  year  2000.  In  the  long  run  no  heroism 
and  no  accidents  can  alter  that.  No  flag-waving, 
no  patriotic  leagues,  no  visiting  of  essentially 
petty  imperial  personages  hither  and  thither,  no 
smashing  of  the  windows  of  outspoken  people 
nor  siezures  of  papers  and  books,  will  arrest  the 
march  of  national  defeat.  And  this  issue  is  al- 
ready so  plain  and  simple,  the  alternatives  are 
becoming  so  pitilessly  clear,  that  even  in  the  stupid- 
e.st  court  and  the  stupidest  constituencies,  it  must 
presently  begin  in  some  dim  way  to  be  felt.     A 

230 


WAR 

time  will  come  when  so  many  people  will  see  this 
issue  clearly  that  it  will  gravely  affect  political  and 
social  life.  The  patriotic  party — the  particular 
gang,  that  is,  of  lawyers,  brewers,  landlords,  and 
railway  directors  that  wishes  to  be  dominant — 
will  be  forced  to  become  an  efficient  party  in  pro- 
fession at  least,  will  be  forced  to  stimulate  and 
organize  that  educational  and  social  development 
that  may  at  last  even  bring  patriotism  under  con- 
trol. The  rulers  of  the  gray,  the  democratic  poli- 
tician and  the  democratic  monarch,  will  be  obliged 
year  by  year  by  the  very  nature  of  things  to  promote 
the  segregation  of  colors  within  the  gray,  to  foster 
the  power  that  will  finally  supersede  democracy  and 
monarchy  altogether,  the  power  of  the  scientifically 
educated,  disciplined  specialist,  and  that  finally  is 
the  power  of  sanity,  the  power  of  the  thing  that  is 
provably  right.  It  may  be  delayed,  but  it  cannot 
be  defeated;  in  the  end  it  must  arrive;  if  not  to-day 
and  among  our  people,  then  to-morrow  and  among 
another  people  who  will  triumph  in  our  overthrow. 
This  is  the  lesson  that  must  be  learned,  that  some 
tongue  and  kindred  of  the  coming  time  must  in- 
evitably learn.  But  what  tongue  it  will  be,  and 
what  kindred  that  will  first  attain  tliis  new  develop- 
ment, opens  far  more  complex  and  far  less  certain 
issues  than  any  we  have  hitherto  considered. 

231 


THE    CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 


THE    CONFLICT   OF    LANGUAGES 


WE  have  brought  together  thus  far  in  these 
Anticipations  the  material  for  the  picture  of 
a  human  community  somewhere  towards  the  year 
2000.  We  have  imagined  its  roads,  the  t3^pe  and 
appearance  of  its  homes,  its  social  developments, 
its  internal  struggle  for  organization;  we  have 
speculated  upon  its  moral  and  aesthetic  condition, 
read  its  newspaper,  made  an  advanced  criticism 
upon  the  lack  of  universality  in  its  literature,  and 
attempted  to  imagine  it  at  war.  We  have  decided 
in  particular  that,  unlike  the  civilized  community 
of  the  immediate  past,  which  lived  either  in  sharply- 
defined  towns  or  agriculturally  over  a  wide  coun- 
try, this  population  will  be  distributed  in  a  quite 
different  way — a  little  more  thickly  over  vast  urban 
regions,  and  a  little  less  thickly  over  less  attractive 
or  less  convenient  or  less  industrial  parts  of  the 
world.  And,  implicit  in  all  that  has  been  written, 
there  has  appeared  an  unavoidable  assumption 
that  the  coming  community  will  be  vast,  something 
geographically  more  extensive  than  most,  and 
geographically  different  from  almost  all  existing 

235 


ANTICIPATIONS 

communities;  that  the  outUne  its  creative  forces 
A\all  draw  not  only  does  not  coincide  with  existing 
poHtical  centres  and  boundaries,  but  will  be  more 
often  than  not  in  direct  conflict  with  them,  uniting 
areas  that  are  separated  and  separating  areas  that 
are  united,  grouping  here  half  a  dozen  tongues  and 
peoples  together,  and  there  tearing  apart  homo- 
geneous bodies  and  distributing  the  fragments 
among  separate  groups.  And  it  will  now  be  well 
to  inquire  a  little  into  the  general  causes  of  these 
existing  divisions,  the  political  boundaries  of  to- 
day, and  the  still  older  contours  of  language  and 
race. 

It  is  first  to  be  remarked  that  each  of  these  sets 
of  boundarievS  is  superposed,  as  it  were,  on  the 
older  sets.  The  race  areas,  for  example,  which 
are  now  not  traceable  in  Europe  at  all,  must  have 
represented  old  regions  of  separation;  the  lan- 
guage areas,  which  have  little  or  no  essential  re- 
lation to  racial  distribution,  have  also  given  waj^ 
long  since  to  the  newer  forces  that  have  united 
and  consolidated  nations.  And  the  still  newer 
forces  that  have  united  and  separated  the  nine- 
teenth-century states  have  been,  and  in  many 
cases  are  still,  in  manifest  conflict  with  "  national " 
ideas. 

Now,  in  the  original  separation  of  human  races, 
in  the  subsequent  differentiation  and  spread  of 
languages,  in  the  separation  of  men  into  nation- 
alities, and  in  the  union  and  splitting  of  states 

236 


THE    CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 

and  empires,  we  have  to  deal  essentially  with  the 
fluctuating  manifestations  of  the  same  fundamental 
shaping  factor  which  will  determine  the  distribu- 
tion of  urban  districts  in  the  coming  years.  Every 
boundary  of  the  ethnographical,  linguistic,  politi- 
cal, and  commercial  map — as  a  little  consideration 
will  show  —  has,  indeed,  been  traced  in  the  first 
place  by  the  means  of  transit,  under  the  compul- 
sion of  geographical  contours. 

There  are  evident  in  Europe  four  or  five  or  more 
very  distinct  racial  types,  and  since  the  methods 
and  rewards  of  barbaric  warfare  and  the  nature 
of  the  chief  chattels  of  barbaric  trade  have  always 
been  diametrically  opposed  to  racial  purity,  their 
original  separation  could  only  have  gone  on  through 
such  an  entire  lack  of  communication  as  prevented 
either  trade  or  warfare  between  the  bulk  of  the 
differentiating  bodies.  These  original  racial  types 
are  now  inextricably  mingled.  Unobservant,  over- 
scholarly  people  talk  or  write  in  the  profoundest 
manner  about  a  Teutonic  race  and  a  Keltic  race, 
and  institute  all  sorts  of  curious  contrasts  between 
these  phantoms;  but  these  are  not  races  at  all,  if 
physical  characteristics  have  an^rthing  to  do  with 
race.  The  Dane,  the  Bavarian,  the  Prussian,  the 
Frieslander,  the  Wessex  peasant,  the  Kentish  man, 
the  Virginian,  the  man  from  New  Jersey,  the  Nor- 
wegian, the  Swede,  and  the  Transvaal  Boer,  are 
generalized  about,  for  example,  as  Teutonic,  while 
the  short,  dark,  cunning  sort  of  Welshman,  the  tall 

237 


ANTICIPATIONS 

and  generous  Highlander,  the  miscellaneous  Irish, 
the  square-headed  Breton,  and  anysort  of  Cornwall 
peasant  are  Kelts  within  the  meaning  of  this  oil- 
lamp  anthropology.*  People  who  believe  in  this 
sort  of  thing  are  not  the  sort  of  people  that  one 
attempts  to  convert  by  a  set  argument.  One  need 
only  say  the  thing  is  not  so;  there  is  no  Teutonic 
race,  and  there  never  has  been;  there  is  no  Keltic 
race,  and  there  never  has  been.  No  one  has  ever 
proved  or  attempted  to  prove  the  existence  of  such 
races,  the  thing  has  always  been  assumed ;  they  are 
dogmas  with  nothing  but  questionable  authority 
behind  them,  and  the  onus  of  proof  rests  on  the 
believer.  This  nonsense  about  Keltic  and  Teu- 
tonic is  no  more  science  than  Lombroso's  extraor- 
dinary assertions  about  criminals,  or  palmistry, 
or  the  development  of  religion  from  a  solar  myth. 
Indisputably  there  are  several  races  intermingled 
in  the  European  populations — I  am  inclined  to 
suspect  the  primitive  European  races  may  be 
found  to  be  so  distinct  as  to  resist  confusion  and 
pamnyxia  through  hybridization — but  there  is  no 


*  Under  the  intoxication  of  the  Keltic  Renascence  the  most 
diverse  sorts  of  human  beings  have  foregathered  and  met  face 
to  face,  and  been  photographed  Pan-Keltically,  and  have  no 
doubt  gloated  over  these  collective  photographs,  without  any 
of  them  realizing,  it  seems,  what  a  miscellaneous  thing  the 
Keltic  race  must  be.  There  is  nothing  that  may  or  may  not 
be  a  Kelt,  and  I  know,  for  example,  professional  Kelts  who  axe, 
so  far  as  face,  manners,  accents,  morals,  and  ideals  go,  indis- 
tinguishable from  other  people  who  are,  I  am  told,  indisputably 
Assyroid  Jews. 

238 


THE   CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 

inkling  of  a  satisfactory  analysis  yet  that  will 
discriminate  what  these  races  were  and  define  them 
in  terms  of  physical  and  moral  character.  The 
fact  remains  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  racial- 
ly pure  and  homogeneous  community  in  Europe 
distinct  from  other  communities.  Even  among 
the  Jews,  according  to  Erckert  and  Chantre  and 
J.  Jacobs,  there  are  markedly  divergent  types; 
there  may  have  been  two  original  elements  and 
there  have  been  extensive  local  intermixtures. 

Long  before  the  beginnings  of  history,  while 
even  language  was  in  its  first  beginnings — in- 
deed, as  another  aspect  of  the  same  process  as  the 
beginning  of  language — the  first  complete  isola- 
tions that  established  race  were  breaking  down 
again,  the  little  pools  of  race  were  running  to- 
gether into  less  homogeneous  lagoons  and  marshes 
of  humanity,  the  first  paths  were  being  worn — 
war-paths,  for  the  most  part.  Still  differentiation 
would  be  Igirgely  at  work.  Without  frequent 
intercourse,  frequent  interchange  of  women  as 
the  great  factor  in  that  intercourse,  the  tribes  and 
bands  of  mankind  would  still  go  on  separating, 
would  develop  dialectic  and  customary,  if  not 
physical  and  moral  differences.  It  was  no  longer 
a  case  of  pools,  perhaps,  but  they  were  still  in  lakes. 
There  were  as  yet  no  open  seas  of  mankind.  With 
advancing  civilization,  with  iron  weapons  and 
war  discipline,  with  established  paths  and  a  social 
rule,  and  presently  with  the  coming  of  the  horse, 

239 


ANTICIPATIONS 

what  one  might  call  the  areas  of  assimilation 
would  increase  in  size.  A  stage  would  be  reached 
when  the  only  checks  to  transit  of  a  sufficiently  con- 
venient sort  to  keep  language  uniform  would  be 
the  sea  or  mountains  or  a  broad  river  or — pure  dis- 
tance. And  presently  the  rules  of  the  game,  so  to 
speak,  would  be  further  altered  and  the  unifications 
and  isolations  that  were  establishing  themselves 
upset  altogether  and  brought  into  novel  conflict 
by  the  beginnings  of  navigation,  whereby  an 
impassable  barrier  became  a  highway. 

The  commencement  of  actual  European  history 
coincides  with  the  closing  phases  of  what  was 
probably  a  very  long  period  of  a  foot  and  (oc- 
casional) horseback  state  of  communications; 
the  adjustments  so  arrived  at  being  already  in 
an  early  state  of  rearrangement  through  the  ad- 
vent of  the  ship.  The  communities  of  Europe 
were  still,  for  the  larger  part,  small,  isolated  tribes 
and  kingdoms,  such  kingdoms  as  a  mainly  pedes- 
trian militia,  or  at  any  rate  a  militia  without  trans- 
port, and  drawn  from  (and  soon  drawn  home  again 
by)  agricultural  work — might  hold  together.  The 
increase  of  transit  facilities  between  such  com- 
munities, by  the  development  of  shipping  and 
the  invention  of  the  wheel  and  the  made  road, 
spelled  increased  trade  perhaps  for  a  time,  but  very 
speedily  a  more  extensive  form  of  war,  and  in  the 
end  either  the  wearing  away  of  differences  and 
union,   or  conquest.     Man  is  the  creature  of  a 

240 


THE    CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 

struggle  for  existence,  incurably  egoistic  and 
aggressive.  Convince  him  of  the  gospel  of  self- 
abnegation  even,  and  he  instantly  becomes  its 
zealous  missionary,  taking  great  credit  that  his 
expedients  to  ram  it  into  the  minds  of  his  fellow- 
creatures  do  not  include  physical  force  —  and  if 
that  is  not  self-abnegation,  he  asks,  what  is?  So 
he  has  been,  and  so  he  is  likely  to  remain.  Not 
to  be  so,  is  to  die  of  abnegation  and  extinguish 
the  type.  Improvement  in  transit  between  com- 
munities, formerly  for  all  practical  purposes  iso- 
lated, means,  therefore,  and  always  has  meant, 
and,  I  imagine,  always  will  mean,  that  now  they 
can  get  at  one  another.  And  they  do.  Thej'^ 
inter-breed  and  fight,  physically,  mentally,  and 
spiritually.  Unless  Providence  is  belied  in  His 
works,  that  is  what  they  are  meant  to  do. 

A  third  invention  which,  though  not  a  means  of 
transit  like  the  wheeled  vehicle  and  the  ship,  was 
yet  a  means  of  communication,  rendered  still 
larger  political  reactions  possible,  and  that  was 
the  development  of  systems  of  writing.  The 
first  empires  and  some  sort  of  written  speech  arose 
together.  Just  as  a  kingdom,  as  distinguished 
from  a  mere  tribal  group  of  villages,  is  almost 
impossible  without  horses,  so  is  an  empire  without 
writing  and  post-roads.  The  history  of  the  whole 
world  for  three  thousand  years  is  the  history  of  a 
unity  larger  than  the  small  kingdom  of  the  Hep- 
tarchy type,  endeavoring  to  establish  itself  under 
I*       .  241 


ANTICIPATIONS 

the  stress  of  these  discoveries  of  horse-traffic  and 
shipping  and  the  written  word,  the  history  that 
is  of  the  consequences  of  the  partial  shattering 
of  the  barriers  that  had  been  effectual  enough  to 
prevent  the  fusion  of  more  than  tribal  communities 
through  all  the  long  ages  before  the  dawn  of  history. 
East  of  the  Gobi  Pamir  barrier  there  has  slowly 
grown  up  under  these  new  conditions  the  Chinese 
system.  West  and  north  of  the  Sahara  Gobi 
barrier  of  deserts  and  mountains,  the  extraor- 
dinarily strong  and  spacious  conceptions  of  the 
Romans  succeeded  in  dominating  the  world,  and 
do,  indeed,  in  a  sort  of  mutilated  way,  by  the  powers 
of  great  words  and  wide  ideas,  in  Caesarism  and 
Imperialism,  in  the  titles  of  Czar,  Kaiser,  and 
Imperator,  in  Papal  pretension  and  countless 
political  devices,  dominate  it  to  this  hour.  For 
awhile  these  conceptions  sustained  a  united  and 
to  a  large  extent  organized  empire  over  very  much 
of  this  space.  But  at  its  stablest  time,  this  union 
was  no  more  than  a  political  union,  the  spreading 
of  a  thin  layer  of  Latin-speaking  officials,  of  a 
thin  network  of  roads  and  a  very  thin  veneer,  in- 
deed, of  customs  and  refinements,  over  the  scarce- 
ly touched  national  masses.  It  checked,  perhaps, 
but  it  nowhere  succeeded  in  stopping  the  slow  but 
inevitable  differentiation  of  province  from  province 
and  nation  from  nation.  The  forces  of  transit  that 
permitted  the  Roman  imperialism  and  its  partial 
successors  to  establish  wide  ascendencies,  were  not 

242 


THE    CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 

sufficient  to  carry  the  resultant  unity  beyond  the 
pohtical  stage.  There  was  unity  but  not  unifica- 
tion. Tongues  and  writing  ceased  to  be  pure 
without  ceasing  to  be  distinct.  Sympathies,  re- 
ligious and  social  practices,  ran  apart  and  rounded 
themselves  off  like  drops  of  oil  on  water.  Travel 
was  restricted  to  the  rulers  and  the  troops  and  to  a 
wealthy  leisure  class,  commerce  was  for  most  of 
the  constituent  provinces  of  the  empire  a  com- 
merce in  superficialities,  and  each  province — except 
for  Italy,  which  latterly  became  dependent  on  an 
over-seas  food  supply — was  in  all  essential  things 
autonomous,  could  have  continued  in  existence, 
rulers  and  ruled,  arts,  luxuries,  and  refinements 
just  as  they  stood,  if  all  other  lands  and  customs 
had  been  swept  out  of  being.  Local  convulsions 
and  revolutions,  conquests  and  developments, 
occurred  indeed,  but  though  the  stones  were  al- 
tered the  mosaic  remained,  and  the  general  size 
and  character  of  its  constituent  pieces  remained. 
So  it  was  under  the  Romans,  so  it  was  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  and  so  it  would  probably  have 
remained  as  long  as  the  post-road  and  the  sailing- 
ship  were  the  most  rapid  forms  of  transit  within 
the  reach  of  man.  Wars  and  powers  and  princes 
came  and  went,  that  was  all.  Nothing  was  chang- 
ed, there  was  only  one  state  the  more  or  less.  Even 
in  the  eighteenth  century  the  process  of  real  uni- 
fication had  effected  so  little  that  not  one  of  the 
larger  kingdoms  of  Europe  escaped  a  civil  war — 

243 


ANTICIPATIONS 

not  a  class  war,  but  a  really  internal  war — between 
one  part  of  itself  and  another,  in- that  hundred 
years.  In  spite  of  Rome's  few  centuries  of  un- 
stable empire,  internal  wars,  a  perpetual  struggle 
against  finally  triumphant  disruption  seemed  to 
be  the  unavoidable  destiny  of  every  power  that 
attempted  to  rule  over  a  larger  radius  than  at  most 
a  hundred  miles. 

So  evident  was  this  that  many  educated  English 
persons  thought  then,  and  many  who  are  not  in  the 
habit  of  analyzing  operating  causes,  still  think 
to-day,  that  the  wide  diffusion  of  the  English- 
speaking  people  is  a  mere  preliminary  to  their 
political,  social,  and  linguistic  disruption — the 
eighteenth-century  breach  with  the  United  States 
is  made  a  precedent  of,  and  the  unification  that 
followed  the  war  of  Union  and  the  growing  uni- 
fication of  Canada  is  overlooked — that  linguistic 
differences,  differences  of  custom,  costume,  preju- 
dice, and  the  like,  will  finally  make  the  Australian, 
the  Canadian  of  English  blood,  the  Virginian, 
and  the  English  Africander,  as  incomprehensible 
and  unsympathetic  one  to  another  as  Spaniard 
and  Englishman  or  Frenchman  and  German 
are  now.  On  such  a  supposition  all  our  current 
imperialism  is  the  most  foolish  defiance  of  the  in- 
evitable, the  maddest  waste  of  blood,  treasure,  and 
emotion  that  man  ever  made.  So,  indeed,  it  might 
be — so,  indeed,  I  certainly  think  it  would  be — if  it 
were  not  that  the  epoch  of  post-road  and  sailing- 

244 


THE    CONFLICT   OF    LANGUAGES 

ship  is  at  an  end.  We  are  in  the  beginning  of  a  new 
time,  with  such  forces  of  organization  and  uni- 
fication at  work  in  mechanical  traction,  in  the 
telephone  and  telegraph,  in  a  whole  wonderland 
of  novel,  space-destroying  appliances,  and  in  the 
correlated,  inevitable  advance  in  practical  educa- 
tion, as  the  world  has  never  felt  before. 

The  operation  of  these  unifying  forces  is  already 
to  be  very  distinctly  traced  in  the  check,  the  arrest, 
indeed,  of  any  further  differentiation  in  existing 
tongues,  even  in  the  most  widely  spread.  In  fact, 
it  is  more  than  an  arrest  even;  the  forces  of  differ- 
entiation have  been  driven  back  and  an  actual 
process  of  assimilation  has  set  in.  In  England,  at 
the  commencement  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the 
common  man  of  Somerset  and  the  common  man  of 
Yorkshire,  the  Sussex  peasant,  the  Caithness 
cottar  and  the  common  Ulsterman,  would  have 
been  almost  incomprehensible  to  one  another. 
They  differed  in  accent,  in  idiom,  and  in  their  very 
names  for  things.  They  differed  in  their  ideas 
about  things.  They  were,  in  plain  English,  foreign- 
ers one  to  another.  Now  they  differ  only  in  accent, 
and  even  that  is  a  dwindling  difference.  Their 
language  has  become  ampler  because  now  they 
read.  They  read  books — or,  at  any  rate,  they 
learn  to  read  out  of  books — and  certainly  they 
read  newspapers  and  those  scrappy  periodicals 
that  people  like  bishops  pretend  to  think  so  det- 
rimental to  the  human  mind,  periodicals  that  it 

245 


ANTICIPATIONS 

is  cheaper  to  make  at  centres  and  uniformly,  than 
locally  in  accordance  with  local  needs.  Since  the 
newspaper  cannot  fit  the  locality,  the  locality  has 
to  broaden  its  mind  to  the  newspaper,  and  to 
ideas  acceptable  in  other  localities.  The  word 
and  the  idiom  of  the  literary  language  and  the 
pronunciation  suggested  by  its  spelling  tends  to 
prevail  over  the  local  usage.  And,  moreover,  there 
is  a  persistent  mixing  of  peoples  going  on,  migra- 
tion in  search  of  employment  and  so  on,  quite 
unprecedented  before  the  railways  came.  Few 
people  are  content  to  remain  in  that  locality  and 
state  of  life  "into  which  it  has  pleased  God  to  call 
them."  As  a  result,  dialectic  purity  has  vanished, 
dialects  are  rapidly  vanishing,  and  novel  differen- 
tiations are  retarded  or  arrested  altogether.  Such 
novelties  as  do  establish  themselves  in  a  locality 
are  widely  disseminated  almost  at  once  in  books 
and  periodicals. 

A  parallel  arrest  of  dialectic  separation  has 
happened  in  France,  in  Italy,  in  Germany,  and  in 
the  states.  It  is  not  a  process  peculiar  to  any 
one  nation.  It  is  simply  an  aspect  of  the  general 
process  that  has  arisen  out  of  mechanical  locomo- 
tion. The  organization  of  elementary  education 
has  no  doubt  been  an  important  factor,  but  the 
essential  influence  working  through  this  circum- 
stance is  the  fact  that  paper  is  relatively  cheap  to 
type-setting,  and  both  cheap  to  authorship — even 
the  commonest  sorts  of  authorship — and  the  wider 

246 


THE    CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 

the  area  a  periodical  or  book  serves,  the  bigger, 
more  attractive,  and  better  it  can  be  made  for  the 
same  money.  And  clearly  this  process  of  assimi- 
lation will  continue.  Even  local  differences  of 
accent  seem  likely  to  follow.  The  itinerant  dra- 
matic company,  the  itinerant  preacher,  the  coming 
extension  of  telephones  and  the  phonograph, 
which  at  any  time  in  some  application  to  corre- 
spondence or  instruction  may  cease  to  be  a  toy, 
all  these  things  attack,  or  threaten  to  attack,  the 
weeds  of  differentiation  before  they  can  take  root. 
And  this  process  is  not  restricted  to  dialects 
merely.  The  native  of  a  small  country  who  knows 
no  other  language  than  the  tongue  of  his  country 
becomes  increasingly  at  a  disadvantage  in  com- 
parison with  the  user  of  any  of  the  three  great 
languages  of  the  Europeanized  world.  For  his 
literature  he  depends  on  the  scanty  writers  who 
are  in  his  own  case  and  write,  or  have  written,  in 
his  own  tongue.  Necessarily  they  are  few,  be- 
cause necessarily  with  a  small  public  there  can  be 
only  subsistence  for  a  few.  For  his  science  he 
is  in  a  worse  case.  His  country  can  produce 
neither  teachers  nor  discoverers  to  compare  with 
the  numbers  of  such  workers  in  the  larger  areas, 
and  it  will  neither  pay  them  to  write  original  matter 
for  his  instruction  nor  to  translate  what  has  been 
written  in  other  tongues.  The  larger  the  number 
of  people  reading  a  tongue,  the  larger — other  things 
being  equal — will  be  not  only  the  output  of  more  or 

247 


ANTICIPATIONS 

less  original  literature  in  that  tongue,  but  also  the 
more  profitable  and  numerous  will- be  translations 
of  whatever  has  value  in  other  tongues.  More- 
over, the  larger  the  reading  public  in  any  language 
the  cheaper  will  it  be  to  supply  copies  of  the  desired 
work.  In  the  matter  of  current  intelligence  the 
case  of  the  speaker  of  the  small  language  is  still 
worse.  His  newspaper  will  need  to  be  cheaply 
served,  his  home  intelligence  will  be  cut  and  re- 
stricted, his  foreign  news  belated  and  second  hand. 
Moreover,  to  travel  even  a  little  distance  or  to  con- 
duct anything  but  the  smallest  business  enter- 
prise will  be  exceptionally  inconvenient  to  him. 
The  Englishman  who  knows  no  language  but  his 
own  may  travel  well-nigh  all  over  the  world  and 
everywhere  meet  some  one  who  can  speak  his 
tongue.  But  what  of  the  Welsh-speaking  Welsh- 
man? What  of  the  Basque  and  the  Lithuanian 
who  can  speak  only  his  mother  tongue?  Every- 
where such  a  man  is  a  foreigner  and  with  all  the 
foreigner's  disadvantages.  In  most  places  he  is 
for  all  practical  purposes  deaf  and  dumb. 

The  inducements  to  an  Englishman,  Frenchman, 
or  German  to  become  bilingual  are  great  enough 
nowadays,  but  the  inducements  to  a  speaker  of  the 
smaller  languages  are  rapidly  approaching  com- 
pulsion. He  must  do  it  in  self-defence.  To  be 
an  educated  man  in  his  own  vernacular  has  be- 
come an  impossibility;  he  must  either  become  a 
mental  subject  of  one  of  the  greater  languages  or 

248 


THE    CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 

sink  to  the  intellectual  status  of  a  peasant.  But 
if  our  analysis  of  social  development  was  correct, 
the  peasant  of  to-day  will  be  represented  to-morrow 
by  the  people  of  no  account  whatever — the  classes 
of  extinction,  the  people  of  the  abyss.  If  that 
analysis  was  correct,  the  essential  nation  will  be 
all  of  educated  men — that  is  to  say,  the  essential 
nation  will  speak  some  dominant  language  or 
cease  to  exist,  whatever  its  primordial  tongue  may 
have  been.  It  will  pass  out  of  being  and  become 
a  mere  local  area  of  the  lower  social  stratum — 
a  problem  for  the  philanthropic  amateur. 

The  action  of  the  force  of  attraction  of  the  great 
tongues  is  cumulative.  It  goes  on,  as  bodies  fall, 
with  a  steady  acceleration.  The  more  the  great 
tongues  prevail  over  the  little  languages  the  less 
will  be  the  inducement  to  write  and  translate  into 
thcvse  latter,  the  less  the  inducement  to  master  them 
with  any  care  or  precision.  And  so  this  attack  upon 
the  smaller  tongues,  this  gravitation  of  those  who 
are  born  to  speak  them  towards  the  great  languages, 
is  not  only  to  be  seen  going  on  in  the  case  of  such 
languages  as  Flemish,  Welsh,  or  Basque,  but  even 
in  the  case  of  Norwegian  and  of  such  a  great  and 
noble  tongue  as  the  Italian,  I  am  afraid  that  the 
trend  of  things  makes  for  a  similar  suppression. 
All  over  Italy  is  the  French  newspaper  and  the 
French  book.  French  wins  its  way  more  and  jfcore 
there,  as  English,  I  understand,  is  doing  in  Nor- 
way, and  English  and  German  in  Holland.     And 

249 


ANTICIPATIONS 

in  the  coming  years  when  the  reading  pubhc  will, 
in  the  case  of  the  Western  nations/  be  practically 
the  whole  functional  population,  when  travel  will 
be  more  extensive  and  abundant,  and  the  inter- 
cliange  of  printed  matter  still  cheaper  and  swifter 
— and,  above  all,  with  the  spread  of  the  telephone 
— the  process  of  subtle,  bloodless,  unpremediated 
annexation  will  conceivably  progress  much  more 
rapidly  even  than  it  does  at  present.  The  twen- 
tieth century  will  see  the  effectual  crowding  out 
of  most  of  the  weaker  languages — if  not  a  posi- 
tive crowding  out,  yet  at  least  (as  in  Flanders)  a 
supplementing  of  them  by  the  superposition  of  one 
or  other  of  a  limited  number  of  world-languages 
over  the  area  in  which  each  is  spoken.  This  will 
go  on  not  only  in  Europe,  but  with  varying  rates 
of  progress  and  local  eddies  and  interruptions 
over  the  whole  world.  Except  in  the  special  case 
of  China  and  Japan,  where  there  may  be  a  unique 
development,  the  peoples  of  the  world  will  escape 
from  the  wreckage  of  their  too  small  and  swamped 
and  foundering  social  systems,  only  up  the  ladders 
of  what  one  maj^  call  the  aggregating  tongues. 

What  will  these  aggregating  world-languages 
be?  If  one  has  regard  only  to  its  extension  during 
the  nineteenth  century,  one  may  easily  incline  to 
overrate  the  probabilities  of  English  becoming  the 
chief  of  these.  But  a  great  part  of  the  vast  exten- 
sion of  English  that  has  occurred  has  been  due  to 
the  rapid  reproduction  of  originally  English-speak- 

250 


THE    CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 

ing  peoples,  the  emigration  of  foreigners  into  Eng- 
lish-speaking countries  in  quantities  too  small  to  re- 
sist the  contagion  ^about  them,  and  the  compulsion 
due  to  the  political  £ind  commercial  preponderance 
of  a  people  too  illiterate  to  readily  master  strange 
tongues.  None  of  these  causes  have  any  essential 
permanence.  When  one  comes  to  look  more  closely 
into  the  question  one  is  surprised  to  discover  how 
slow  the  extension  of  English  has  been  in  the 
face  of  apparently  far  less  convenient  tongues. 
English  still  fails  to  replace  the  French  language 
in  French  Canada,  and  its  ascendency  is  doubt- 
ful to-day  in  South  Africa,  after  nearly  a  centurj'' 
of  British  dominion.  It  has  none  of  the  contagious 
quality  of  French,  and  the  small  class  that  mo- 
nopolizes the  direction  of  British  affairs,  and  prob- 
ably will  monopolize  it  yet  for  several  decades,  has 
never  displayed  any  great  zeal  to  propagate  its 
use.  Of  the  few  ideas  possessed  by  the  British 
governing  class,  the  destruction  and  discourage- 
ment of  schools  and  colleges  is,  unfortunately, 
one  of  the  chief,  and  there  is  an  absolute  incapacit}^ 
to  understand  the  political  significance  of  the 
language  question.  The  Hindoo  who  is  at  pains 
to  learn  and  use  English  encounters  something 
uncommonly  like  hatred  disguised  in  a  facetious 
form.  He  will  certainly  read  little  about  himself 
in  English  that  is  not  grossly  contemptuous, 
to  reward  him  for  his  labor.  The  possibilities 
that  have  existed,  and  that  do  still  in  a  dwindling 

251 


ANTICIPATIONS 

degree  exist,  for  resolute  statesmen  to  t)iake  English 
the  common  language  of  communication  for  all 
Asia  south  and  east  of  the  Himalayas,  will  have 
to  develop  of  their  own  force  or  dwindle  and  pass 
away.  They  may  quite  probablj'-  pass  away. 
There  is  no  sign  that  either  the  English  or  the 
Americans  have  a  sufficient  sense  of  the  impor- 
tance of  linguistic  predominance  in  the  future  of 
their  race  to  interfere  with  natural  processes  in  this 
matter  for  man}'^  years  to  come. 

Among  peoples  not  actually  subject  to  British 
or  American  rule,  and  who  are  neither  waiters  nor 
commercial  travellers,  the  inducements  to  learn 
English,  rather  than  French  or  German,  do  not 
increase.  If  our  initial  assumptions  are  right,  the 
decisive  factor  in  this  matter  is  the  amount  of 
science  and  thought  the  acquisition  of  a  language 
will  afford  the  man  who  learns  it.  It  becomes, 
therefore,  a  fact  of  verj^  great  significance  that 
the  actual  number  of  books  published  in  English 
is  less  than  that  in  French  or  German,  and  that 
the  proportion  of  serious  books  is  very  greatly 
less.  A  large  proportion  of  English  books  are 
novels  adapted  to  the  minds  of  women,  or  of  boys 
and  superannuated  business  men — stories  designed 
rather  to  allay  than  stimulate  thought  —  they 
are  the  only  books,  indeed,  that  are  profitable  to 
publisher  and  author  alike.  In  this  connection 
they  do  not  count,  however;  no  foreigner  is  likely 
to  learn  English- for  the  pleasure  of  reading  Miss 

252 


THE    CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 

Marie  Corelli  in  the  original,  or  of  drinking  un- 
translatable elements  from  The  Helmet  of  Navarre. 
The  present  conditions  of  book-production  for  the 
English-reading  public  offer  no  hope  of  any  imme- 
diate change  in  this  respect.  There  is  neither 
honor  nor  reward — there  is  not  even  food  or  shelter 
— for  the  A»r»erican  or  Englishman  who  devotes 
a  year  or  so  of  his  life  to  the  adequate  treatment 
of  any  spacious  question,  and  so  small  is  the  Eng- 
lish-reading public  with  any  special  interest  in 
science,  that  a  great  number  of  important  foreign 
scientific  works  are  never  translated  into  English 
at  all.  Such  interesting  compilations  as  Bloch's 
work  on  war,  for  example,  must  be  read  in  French ; 
in  English  only  a  brief  summary  of  his  results 
is  to  be  obtained,  under  a  sensational  heading,* 
Schopenhauer,  again,  is  only  to  be  got  quite  stupid- 
13^  Bowdlerized,  explained,  and  "  selected  "  in  Eng- 
lish, Many  translations  that  are  made  into  Eng- 
lish are  made  only  to  sell ;  they  are  too  often  the 
work  of  sweated  women  and  girls — very  often  quite 
without  any  special  knowledge  of  the  matter  they 
translate — they  are  difl&cult  to  read  and  untrust- 
worthy to  quote.  The  production  of  books  in 
English,  except  the  author  be  a  wealthy  amateur, 
rests  finally  upon  the  publishers,  and  publishers 
to-day  stand  a  little  lower  than  ordinary  trades- 
men in  not  caring  at  all  whether  the  goods  they 

*Is  War  Now  Impossible?  and  see  also  foot-note,  p.  226. 
253 


ANTICIPATIONS 

sell  are  good  or  bad.  Unusual  books,  they  allege 
— and  all  good  books  are  unusual — are  "difficult 
to  handle,"  and  the  author  must  pay  the  fine — 
amounting,  more  often  than  not,  to  the  greater 
portion  of  his  interest  in  the  book.  There  is  no 
criticism  to  control  the  advertising  enterprises  of 
publishers  and  authors,  and  no  sufficiently  in- 
telligent reading  public  has  differentiated  out  of 
the  confusion  to  encourage  attempts  at  critical 
discrimination.  The  organs  of  the  great  profes- 
sions and  technical  trades  are  as  yet  not  alive 
to  the  part  their  readers  must  play  in  the  pub- 
lic life  of  the  future,  and  ignore  all  but  strict- 
ly technical  publications.  A  bastard  criticism, 
written  in  many  cases  by  publishers'  employes 
— a  criticism  having  a  very  direct  relation  to  the 
advertisement  columns  —  distributes  praise  and 
blame  in  the  periodic  press.  There  is  no  body 
of  great  men,  either  in  England  or  America, 
no  intelligence  in  the  British  court,  that  might 
by  any  form  of  recognition  compensate  the 
philosophical  or  scientific  writer  for  poverty  and 
popular  neglect.  The  more  powerful  a  man's 
intelligence,  the  more  distinctly  he  must  see 
that  to  devote  himself  to  increase  the  scien- 
tific or  philosophical  wealth  of  the  English  tongue 
will  be  to  sacrifice  comfort,  the  respect  of  the 
bulk  of  his  contemporaries,  and  all  the  most  de- 
lightful things  of  life,  for  the  barren  reward  of 
a  not  very  certain  righteous  self-applause.     By 

254 


THE    CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 

brewing  and  dealing  in  tied  houses,*  or  by  selling 
pork  and  tea,  or  by  stock-jobbing,  and  by  pandering 
with  the  profits  so  obtained  to  the  pleasures  of 
the  established  great,  a  man  of  energy  may  hope 
to  rise  to  a  pitch  of  public  honor  and  popularity 
immeasurably  in  excess  of  anything  attainable 
through  the  most  splendid  intellectual  perform- 
ances. Heaven  forbid  I  should  overrate  public 
honors  and  the  company  of  princes!  But  it  is 
not  always  delightful  to  be  splashed  by  the  wheels 
of  cabs.  Always  before  there  has  been  at  least  a 
convention  that  the  court  of  this  country,  and  its 
aristocracy,  were  radiant  centres  of  moral  and  intel- 
lectual influence,  that  they  did  to  some  extent 
check  and  correct  the  judgments  of  the  cab-rank 
and  the  beer-house.  But  the  British  crown  of 
to-day,  so  far  as  it  exists  for  science  and  literature 
at  all,  exists  mainly  to  repudiate  the  claims  of 
intellectual  performance  to  public  respect. 

These  things,  if  they  were  merely  the  grievances 
of  the  study,  might  very  well  rest  there.  But  they 
must  be  recognized  here  because  the  intellectual 

*  It  is  entirely  for  their  wealth  that  brewers  have  been  ennobled 
in  England,  never  because  of  their  services  as  captains  of  a  great 
industry.  Indeed,  these  services  have  been  typically  poor. 
While  these  men  were  earning  their  peerages  by  the  sort  of  pro- 
ceedings that  do  secure  men  peerages  under  the  British  crown, 
the  German  brewers  were  developing  the  art  and  science  of  brew- 
ing with  remarkable  energy  and  success.  The  Germans  and 
Bohemians  can  now  make  light  beers  that  the  English  brewers 
cannot  even  imitate ;  they  are  exporting  beer  to  England  in 
steadily  increasing  volume. 

255 


ANTICIPATIONS 

decline  of  the  published  literature  of  the  English 
language — using  the  word  to  cover  all  sorts  of 
books — involves  finally  the  decline  of  the  language 
£ind  of  all  the  spacious  political  possibilities  that 
go  with  the  wide  extension  of  a  language.  Con- 
ceivably, if  in  the  coming  years  a  deliberate  attempt 
were  made  to  provide  sound  instruction  in  English 
to  all  who  sought  it,  and  to  all  within  the  control 
of  English-speaking  governments,  if  honor  and 
emolument  were  given  to  literary  men  instead  of 
being  left  to  them  to  most  indelicately  take,  and 
if  the  present  sordid  trade  of  publishing  were  so 
lifted  as  to  bring  the  whole  literature,  the  whole 
science,  and  all  the  contemporary  thought  of  the 
world — not  some  selection  of  the  world's  litera- 
ture, not  some  obsolete  encyclopaedia  sold  meanly 
and  basely  to  choke  hungry  minds,  but  a  real 
publication  of  all  that  has  been  and  is  being  done 
— within  the  reach  of  each  man's  need  and  de- 
sire who  had  the  franchise  of  the  tongue,  then 
by  the  year  2000  I  would  prophesy  that  the  whole 
functional  body  of  human  societj'  would  read, 
and  perhaps  even  write  and  speak,  our  language. 
And  not  only  that,  but  it  might  be  the  prevalent 
and  everyday  language  of  Scandinavia  and  Den- 
mark and  Holland,  of  all  Africa,  all  North  Amer- 
ica, of  the  Pacific  coasts  of  Asia  and  of  India, 
the  universal  international  language,  and  in  a 
fair  way  to  be  the  universal  language  of  mankind. 
But  such  an  enterprise  demands  a  resolve  and 

256 


THE    CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 

intelligence  beyond  all  the  immediate  signs  of 
the  times;  it  implies  a  veritable  renascence  of  intel- 
lectual life  among  the  English-speaking  peoples. 
The  probabilities  of  such  a  renascence  will  be 
more  conveniently  discussed  at  a  later  stage, 
when  we  attempt  to  draw  the  broad  outline  of 
the  struggle  for  world-wide  ascendency  that  the 
coming  years  will  see.  But  here  it  is  clear  that 
upon  the  probability  of  such  a  renascence  depends 
the  extension  of  the  language,  and  not  only  that, 
but  the  preservation  of  that  military  and  naval 
efficiency  upon  which,  in  this  world  of  resolute 
aggression,  the  existence  of  the  English-speaking 
communities  finally  depends. 

French  and  German  will  certainly  be  aggre- 
gating languages  during  the  greater  portion  of  the 
coming  years.  Of  the  two,  I  am  inclined  to  think 
French  will  spread  further  than  German.  There 
is  a  disposition  in  the  world,  which  the  French 
share,  to  grossly  undervalue  the  prospects  of  all 
things  French,  derived,  so  far  as  I  can  gather, 
from  the  facts  that  the  French  were  beaten  by 
the  Germans  in  1870,  and  that  they  do  not  breed 
with  the  abandon  of  rabbits  or  negroes.  These 
are  considerations  that  affect  the  dissemination 
of  French  very  little.  The  French  reading  public 
is  something  different  and  very  much  larger  than 
the  existing  French  political  system.  The  number 
of  books  published  in  French  is  greater  than  that 
published  in  English;  there  is  a  critical  reception 
«'  257 


ANTICIPATIONS 

for  a  work  published  in  French  that  is  one  of  the 
few  things  worth  a  writer's  having,  and  the  French 
translators  are  the  most  alert  and  efficient  in  the 
world.  One  has  only  to  see  a  Parisian  book-shop, 
and  to  recall  an  English  one,  to  realize  the  as  yet 
unattainable  standing  of  French.  The  serried 
ranks  of  lemon-colored  volumes  in  the  former 
have  the  whole  range  of  human  thought  and  in- 
terest ;  there  are  no  taboos  and  no  limits ;  you  have 
everything  up  and  down  the  scale,  from  frank 
indecency  to  stark  wisdom.  It  is  a  shop  for  men. 
I  remember  my  amazement  to  discover  three  copies 
of  a  translation  of  that  most  wonderful  book, 
the  Text-book  of  Psychology  of  Professor  William 
James,  in  a  shop  in  TAvenue  de  rOp6ra  —  three 
copies  of  a  book  that  I  have  never  seen  anywhere 
in  England  outside  my  own  house — and  I  am  an 
attentive  student  of  book-shop  windows !  And  the 
French  books  are  all  so  pleasant  in  the  page,  and 
so  cheap — they  are  for  a  people  that  buys  to  read. 
One  thinks  of  the  English  book-shop,  with  its 
gaudy  reach-me-downs  of  gilded  and  embossed 
cover,  its  horribly  printed  novels  still  more  horribly 
"illustrated,"  the  exasperating  pointless  variety 
in  the  size  and  thickness  of  its  books.  The  general 
effect  of  the  English  book  is  that  it  is  something 
sold  by  a  dealer  in  hric-h-hrac,  honestly  sorry  the 
thing  is  a  book,  but  who  has  done  his  best  to  remedy 
it,  anyhow !  And  all  the  English  shopf ul  is  either 
brand  new  fiction    or  illustrated  travel  (of  Buns 

258 


THE    CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 

loith  the  Grand  Lama  type),  or  gilded  versions  of 
the  classics  of  past  times  done  up  to  give  away. 
While  the  French  book-shop  reeks  of  contempor£iry 
intellectual  life! 

These  things  count  for  French  as  against  English 
now,  and  they  will  count  for  infinitely  more  in  the 
coming  years.  And  over  German,  also,  French  has 
many  advantages.  In  spite  of  the  numerical  pre- 
ponderance of  books  published  in  Germany,  it  is 
doubtful  if  the  German  reader  has  quite  such  a 
catholic  feast  before  him  as  the  reader  of  French. 
There  is  a  mass  of  German  fiction  probably  as 
uninteresting  to  a  foreigner  as  popular  English  and 
American  romance.  And  German,  compared  with 
French,  is  an  unattractive  language;  unmelodious, 
unwieldy,  and  cursed  with  a  hideous  and  blinding 
lettering  that  the  German  is  too  patriotic  to  sacrifice. 
There  has  been  in  Germany  a  more  powerful  parallel 
to  what  one  mav  call  the  "honest  Saxon"  move- 
ment among  the  English,  that  queer  mental  twist 
that  moves  men  to  call  an  otherwise  undistin- 
guished preface  a  "foreword,"  and  find  a  pleas- 
urable advantage  over  their  fellow  -  creatures  in  a 
familiarity  with  "eftsoons."  This  tendency  in 
German  has  done  much  to  arrest  the  simplification 
of  idiom,  and  checked  the  development  of  new 
words  of  classical  origin.  In  particular  it  has 
stood  in  the  way  of  the  international  use  of  scien- 
tific terms.  The  Englishman,  the  Frenchman, 
and  the  Italian  have  a  certain  community  of  tech- 

259 


ANTICIPATIONS 

nical,  scientific,  and  philosophical  phraseology, 
and  it  is  frequently  easier  for  an  Englishman  with 
some  special  knowledge  of  his  subject  to  read 
and  appreciate  a  subtle  and  technical  work  in 
French  than  it  is  for  him  to  fully  enter  into  the 
popular  matter  of  the  same  tongue.  Moreover, 
the  technicalities  of  these  peoples,  being  not  so  im- 
mediately and  constantly  brought  into  contrast 
and  contact  with  their  Latin  or  Greek  roots  as 
they  would  be  if  they  were  derived  (as  are  so  many 
"patriotic"  German  technicalities)  from  native 
roots,  are  free  to  qualify  and  develop  a  final  mean- 
ing distinct  from  their  original  intention.  In  the 
growing  and  changing  body  of  science  this  counts 
for  much.  The  indigenous  Grerman  technicality 
remains  clumsy  and  compromised  by  its  everyday 
relations ;  to  the  end  of  time  it  drags  a  lengthening 
chain  of  unsuitable  associations.  And  the  shade 
of  meaning,  the  limited  qualification,  that  a  French- 
man or  Englishman  can  attain  with  a  mere  twist 
of  the  sentence,  the  German  must  either  abandon 
*  or  laboriously  overstate  with  some  colossal  worm- 
cast  of  parenthesis.  .  .  .  Moreover,  against  the 
German  tongue  there  are  hostile  frontiers — there 
are  hostile  people  who  fear  German  prepon- 
derance, and  who  have  set  their  hearts  against 
its  use.  In  Roumania,  and  among  the  Slav,  Bo- 
hemian, and  Hungarian  peoples,  French  attacks 
German  in  the  flank,  and  has  as  clear  a  prospect 
of  predominance. 

260 


THE    CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 

These  two  tongues  must  inevitably  come  into 
keen  conflict;  they  will  perhaps  fight  their  battle 
for  the  linguistic  conquest  of  Europe,  and  perhaps 
of  the  world,  in  a  great  urban  region  that  will  arise 
about  the  Rhine.  Politically  this  region  lies  now 
in  six  independent  states,  but  economically  it  must 
become  one  in  the  next  fifty  years.  It  will  almost 
certainly  be  the  greatest  urban  region  in  all  the 
world  except  that  which  will  arise  in  the  eastern 
States  of  North  America,  and  that  which  may 
arise  somewhere  about  Hankow.  It  will  stretch 
from  Lille  to  Kiel;  it  will  drive  extensions  along 
the  Rhine  valley  into  Switzerland,  and  fling  an  arm 
along  the  Moldau  to  Prague;  it  will  be  the  industrial 
capital  of  the  Old  World.  Paris  will  be  its  West 
End,  and  it  will  stretch  a  spider's  web  of  railways 
and  great  roads  of  the  new  sort  over  the  whole 
continent.  Even  when  the  coal-field  industries 
of  the  plain  give  place  to  the  industrial  application 
of  mountain-born  electricity,  this  great  city  region 
will  remain,  I  believe,  in  its  present  position  at 
the  seaport  end  of  the  great  plain  of  the  Old  World. 
Considerations  of  transit  will  keep  it  where  it  has 
grown,  and  electricity  will  be  brought  to  it  in  mighty 
cables  from  the  torrents  of  the  central  European 
mountain  mass.  Its  westward  port  may  be  Bor- 
deaux or  Milford  Haven,  or  even  some  port  in  the 
southwest  of  Ireland  —  unless,  which  is  very  un- 
likely, the  velocity  of  secure  sea-travel  can  be  in- 
creased beyond  that   of  land  locomotion,     I  do 

261 


ANTICIPATIONS 

not  see  how  this  great  region  is  to  unify  itself 
without  some  hnguistic  compromise — the  Ger- 
manization  of  the  French-speaking  peoples  bj'^  force 
is  too  ridiculous  a  suggestion  to  entertain.  Al- 
most inevitably  with  travel,  with  transport  com- 
munications, with  every  condition  of  human  con- 
venience insisting  upon  it,  formally  or  informally 
a  bilingual  compromise  will  come  into  operation, 
and,  to  my  mind  at  least,  the  chances  seem  even 
that  French  will  emerge  on  the  upper  hand.  Un- 
less, indeed,  that  great  renascence  of  the  English- 
speaking  peoples  should,  after  all,  so  overwhelm- 
ingly occur  as  to  force  this  European  city  to  be 
tri-lingual,  and  prepare  the  way  by  which  the 
whole  world  may  at  last  speak  together  in  one 
tongue. 

These  are  the  aggregating  tongues.  I  do  not 
think  that  any  other  tongues  than  these  are  quite 
likely  to  hold  their  own  in  the  coming  time.  Italian 
may  flourish  in  the  city  of  the  Po  valley,  but  only 
with  French  beside  it.  Spanish  and  Russian  are 
mighty  languages,  but  without  a  reading  public 
how  can  they  prevail,  and  what  prospect  of  a  read- 
ing public  has  either?  They  are,  I  believe,  already 
judged.  By  A.D.  2000  all  these  languages  will  be 
tending  more  and  more  to  be  the  second  tongues  of 
bilingual  communities,  with  French,  or  English,  or 
— less  probably — German  winning  the  upper  hand. 

But  when  one  turns  to  China  there  are  the  strang- 
est possibilities.     It  is  in  eastern  Asia  alone  that 

262 


THE    CONFLICT    OF    LANGUAGES 

there  seems  to  be  any  possibility  of  a  synthesis 
sufficiently  great  to  maintain  itself,  arising  outside 
of,  and  independently  of,  the  interlocked  system 
of  mechanically  sustained  societies  that  is  develop- 
ing out  of  mediaeval  Christendom.  Throughout 
eastern  Asia  there  is  still,  no  doubt,  a  vast  wilder- 
ness of  languages,  but  over  them  all  rides  the 
Chinese  writing.  And  very  strong — strong  enough 
to  be  very  gravely  considered — is  the  possibility  of 
that  writing  taking  up  an  orthodox  association  of 
sounds,  and  becoming  a  world  speech.  The  Jap- 
anese written  language,  the  language  of  Japanese 
literature,  tends  to  assimilate  itself  to  Chinese, 
and  fresh  Chinese  words  and  expressions  are  con- 
tinually taking  root  in  Japan.  The  Japanese 
are  a  people  quite  abnormal  and  incalculable, 
with  a  touch  of  romance,  a  conception  of  honor, 
a  quality  of  imagination,  and  a  clearness  of  in- 
telligence that  renders  possible  for  them  things 
inconceivable  of  any  other  existing  nation.  I  may 
be  the  slave  of  perspective  effects,  but  when  I  turn 
my  mind .  from  the  pettifogging  muddle  of  the 
English  House  of  Commons,  for  example — that 
magnified  vestry  that  is  so  proud  of  itself  as  a 
club— when  I  turn  from  that  to  this  race  of  brave 
and  smiling  people,  abruptly  destiny  begins  draw- 
ing with  a  bolder  hand.  Suppose  the  Japanese 
were  to  make  up  their  minds  to  accelerate  what- 
ever process  of  synthesis  were  possible  in  China! 
Suppose,  after  all,  I  am  not  the  victim  of  atmos- 

263 


ANTICIPATIONS 

pheric  refraction,  and  they  are,  indeed,  as  gallant 
and  bold  and  intelligent  as  my  baseless  conception 
of  them  would  have  them  be !  They  would  almost 
certainly  find  co-operative  elements  among  the  edu- 
cated Chinese.  .  .  .  But  this  is  no  doubt  the 
lesser  probability.  In  front  and  rear  of  China  the 
English  language  stands.  It  has  the  start  of  all 
other  languages — the  mechanical  advantage — the. 
position.  And  if  only  we,  who  think  and  write 
and  translate  and  print  and  put  forth,  could  make 
it  worth  the  world's  having  I 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 


WE  have  seen  that  the  essential  process  aris- 
ing out  of  the  growth  of  science  and 
mechanism,  and  more  particularly  out  of  the  still 
developing  new  facilities  of  locomotion  and  com- 
munication science  has  afforded,  is  the  deliques- 
cence of  the  social  organizations  of  the  past,  and 
the  synthesis  of  ampler  and  still  ampler  and  more 
complicated  and  still  more  complicated  social  imi- 
ties.  The  suggestion  is  powerful,  the  conclusion  is 
hard  to  resist,  that,  through  whatever  disorders  of 
danger  and  conflict,  whatever  centuries  of  misunder- 
standing and  bloodshed,  men  may  still  have  to 
pass,  this  process  nevertheless  aims  finally,  and 
will  attain  to  the  establishment  of  one  world-state  at 
peace  within  itself.  In  the  economic  sense,  indeed, 
a  world-state  is  aheady  established.  Even  to-day 
we  do  all  buy  and  sell  in  the  same  markets — albeit 
the  owners  of  certain  ancient  rights  levy  their  tolls 
here  and  there — and  the  Hindoo  starves,  the  Italian 
feels  the  pinch,  before  the  Germans  or  the  English 
go  short  of  bread.  There  is  no  real  autonomy  any 
more  in  the  world,  no  simple  right  to  an  absolute 

267 


ANTICIPATIONS 

independence  such  as  formerly  the  Swiss  could 
claim.  The  natioris  and  boundaries  of  to-da}^  do 
no  more  than  mark  claims  to  exemptions,  privileges, 
and  corners  in  the  market — claims  valid  enough 
to  those  whase  minds  and  souls  are  turned  towards 
the  past,  but  absurdities  to  those  who  look  to 
the  future  as  the  end  and  justification  of  our 
present  stresses.  The  claim  to  political  liberty 
amounts,  as  a  rule,  to  no  more  than  the  claim  of  a 
man  to  live  in  a  parish  without  observing  sanitary 
precautions  or  paying  rates  because  he  had  an 
excellent  great-grandfather.  Against  all  these  old 
isolations,  these  obsolescent  particularisms,  the 
forces  of  mechanical  and  scientific  development 
fight,  and  fight  irresistibly;  and  upon  the  general 
recognition  of  this  conflict,  upon  the  intelligence 
and  courage  with  which  its  inflexible  conditions 
are  negotiated,  depends  very  largely  the  amount 
of  bloodshed  and  avoidable  misery  the  coming 
years  will  hold. 

The  final  attainment  of  this  great  synthesis,  like 
the  social  deliquescence  and  reconstruction  dealt 
with  in  the  earlier  of  these  Anticipations,  has  an 
air  of  being  a  process  independent  of  any  collective 
or  conscious  will  in  man,  as  being  the  expression 
of  a  greater  will;  it  is  working  now,  and  may 
work  out  to  its  end  vastly,  and  yet  at  times  almost 
imperceptibly,  as  some  huge  secular  movement  in 
Nature,  the  raising  of  a  continent,  the  crumbling 
of  a  mountain-chain,   goes  on    to  its    appointed 

268 


THE    LARGER    SYNTPIESIS 

culmination.  Or  one  may  compare  the  process  to 
a  net  that  has  surrounded,  and  that  is  drawn  con- 
tinually closer  and  closer  upon,  a  great  and  varied 
multitude  of  men.  We  may  cherish  animosities, 
we  may  declare  imperishable  distances,  we  may 
plot  and  counter-plot,  make  war  and  "fight  to  a 
finish";  the  net  tightens  for  all  that. 

Already  the  need  of  some  synthesis  at  least 
ampler  than  existing  national  organizations  is  so 
apparent  in  the  world,  that  at  least  five  spacious 
movements  of  coalescence  exist  to-day;  there  is 
the  movement  called  Anglo-Saxonism,  the  allied 
but  finally  very  different  movement  of  British 
imperialism,  the  Pan  -  Grermanic  movement,  Pan- 
Slavism,  and  the  conception  of  a  great  union  of 
the  "Latin"  peoples.  Under  the  outrageous  treat- 
ment of  the  white  peoples  an  idea  of  unifying 
the  "Yellow"  peoples  is  pretty  certain  to  become 
audibly  and  visibly  operative  before  many  years. 
These  are  all  deliberate  and  justifiable  suggestions, 
and  they  all  aim  to  sacrifice  minor  differences  in 
order  to  link  like  to  like  in  greater  matters,  and 
so  secure,  if  not  physical  predominance  in  the 
world,  at  least  an  effective  defensive  strength  for 
their  racial,  moral,  customary,  or  linguistic  dif- 
ferences against  the  aggressions  of  other  possible 
coalescences.  But  these  syntheses  or  other  similar 
synthetic  conceptions,  if  they  do  not  contrive  to 
establish  a  rational  social  unity  by  sanely  nego- 
tiated unions,  will  be  forced  to  fight  for  physical 

269 


ANTICIPATIONS 

predominance  in  the  world.  The  whole  trend  of 
forces  in  the  world  is  against  the  preservation 
of  local  social  systems,  however  greatly  and  spa- 
ciously conceived.  Yet  it  is  quite  possible  that 
several  or  all  of  the  cultures  that  will  arise  out  of 
the  development  of  these  Pan-this-and-that  move- 
ments may  in  many  of  their  features  survive,  as 
the  culture  of  the  Jews  has  survived,  political  ob- 
literation, and  may  disseminate  themselves,  as 
the  Jewish  system  has  disseminated  itself,  over 
the  whole  world-city.  Unity  by  no  means  involves 
homogeneity.  The  greater  the  social  organism, 
the  more  complex  and  varied  its  parts,  the  more 
intricate  and  varied  the  interplay  of  culture  and 
breed  and  character  within  it. 

It  is  doubtful  if  either  the  Latin  or  the  Pan- 
Slavic  idea  contains  the  promise  of  any  great 
political  unification.  The  elements  of  the  Latin 
synthesis  are  dispersed  in  South  and  Central 
America  and  about  the  Mediterranean  basin  in 
a  way  that  offers  no  prospect  of  an  economic  unity 
between  them.  The  best  elements  of  the  French 
people  lie  in  the  western  portion  of  what  must 
become  the  greatest  urban  region  of  the  Old  World, 
the  Rhine-Netherlandish  region;  the  interests  of 
north  Italy  draw  that  region  away  from  the  Italy 
of  Rome  and  the  south  towards  the  Swiss  and 
south  Germany,  and  the  Spanish  and  Portuguese 
speaking  half-breeds  of  South  America  have  not 
only  their  own  coalescences  to  arrange,  but  they 

270 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

lie  already  under  the  political  tutelage  of  the  United 
States.  Nowhere  except  in  France  and  north 
Italy  is  there  any  prospect  of  such  an  intellectual 
and  educational  evolution  as  is  necessary  before 
a  great  scheme  of  unification  can  begin  to  take 
effect.  And  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  the  Pan- 
Slavic  dream  are  far  graver.  Its  realization  is 
enormously  hampered  by  the  division  of  its  lan- 
guages, and  the  fact  that  in  the  Bohemian 
language,  in  Polish  and  in  Russian,  there  exist 
distinct  literatures,  almost  equally  splendid  in 
achievement,  but  equally  insufficient  in  quantity 
and  range  to  establish  a  claim  to  replace  all  other 
Slavonic  dialects.  Russia,  which  should  form  the 
central  mass  of  this  synthesis,  stagnates,  rela- 
tively to  the  western  states,  under  the  rule  of 
reactionary  intelligences;  it  does  not  develop, 
and  does  not  seem  likely  to  develop,  the  merest 
beginnings  of  that  great,  educated  middle  class 
with  which  the  future  so  enormously  rests.  The 
Russia  of  to-day  is,  indeed,  very  little  more  than 
a  vast  breeding-ground  for  an  illiterate  peasantry, 
and  .the  forecasts  of  its  future  greatness  entirely 
ignore  that  dwindling  significance  of  mere  numbers 
in  warfare  which  is  the  clear  and  necessary  conse- 
quence of  mechanical  advance.  To  a  large  extent, 
I  believe,  the  western  Slavs  will  follow  the  Prus- 
sians and  Lithuanians,  and  be  incorporated  in  the 
urbanization  of  Western  Europe,  and  the  remoter 
portions  of  Russia  seem  destined  to  become — are, 

271 


ANTICIPATIONS 

indeed,  becoming — abyss,  a  wretched  and  disorder- 
ly abyss,  that  will  not  even  be  formidable  to  the 
armed  and  disciplined  peoples  of  the  new  civiliza- 
tion, the  last  quarter  of  the  earth,  perhaps,  where 
a  barbaric  or  absentee  nobility  will  shadow  the 
squalid  and  unhappy  destinies  of  a  multitude  of 
hopeless  and  unmeaning  lives. 

To  a  certain  extent,  Russia  may  play  the  part 
of  a  vaster  Ireland,  in  her  failure  to  keep  pace  with 
the  educational  and  economic  progress  of  nations 
which  have  come  into  economic  unity  with  her. 
She  will  be  an  Ireland  without  emigration,  a  place 
for  famines.  And  while  Russia  delays  to  develop 
anything  but  a  fecund  orthodoxy  and  this  simple 
peasant  life,  the  grooves  and  channels  are  growing 
ever  deeper  along  which  the  currents  of  trade,  of 
intellectual  and  moral  stimulus,  must  presently 
flow  towards  the  west.  I  see  no  region  where  any- 
thing like  the  comparatively  dense  urban  regions 
that  are  likely  to  arise  about  the  Rhineland  and 
over  the  eastern  States  of  America,  for  example, 
can  develop  in  Russia.  With  railways  planned 
boldhT^,  it  would  have  been  possible,  it  might  still 
be  possible,  to  make  about  Odessa  a  parallel  to 
Chicago,  but  the  existing  railways  run  about 
Odessa  as  though  Asia  were  unknown;  and  when 
at  last  the  commercial  awakening  of  what  is  now 
the  Turkish  Empire  comes,  the  railway  lines  will 
probably  run,  not  north  or  south,  but  from  the 
urban  region  of  the  more  scientific  central  Euro- 

272 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

peans  down  to  Constantinople.  The  long-route 
land  communications  in  the  future  will  become 
continually  more  swift  and  efficient  than  Baltic 
navigation,  and  it  is  unlikly,  therefore,  that  St. 
Petersburg  has  any  great  possibilities  of  growth. 
It  was  founded  by  a  man  whose  idea  of  the  course  of 
trade  and  civilization  was  the  sea  wholly  and 
solely,  and  in  the  future  the  sea  must  necessarily 
become  more  and  more  a  last  resort.  With  its 
spacious  prospects,  its  architectural  magnificence, 
its  political  quality,  its  desertion  by  the  new  com- 
merce, and  its  terrible  peasant  hinterland,  it  may 
come  about  that  a  striking  analogy  between  St. 
Petersburg  and  Dublin  will  finally  appear. 

So  much  for  the  Pan-Slavic  synthesis.  It  seems 
improbable  that  it  can  prevail  against  the  forces 
that  make  for  the  linguistic  and  economic  annexa- 
tion of  the  greater  part  of  European  Russia  and  of 
the  minor  Slavonic  masses,  to  the  great  Western 
European  urban  region. 

The  political  centre  of  gravity  of  Russia,  in  its 
resistance  to  these  economic  movements,  is  palpabh^ 
shifting  eastward  even  to-day,  but  that  carries  it 
away  from  the  central  European  synthesis  only 
towards  the  vasth^  more  enormous  attracting 
centre  of  China.  Politically  the  Russian  govern- 
ment may  come  to  dominate  China  in  the  coming 
decades,  but  the  reality  beneath  anj^  such  formal 
predominance  will  be  the  absorption  of  Russia 
beyond  the  range  of  the  European  pull  by  .the 

.8  273 


ANTICIPATIONS 

synthesis  of  Eastern  Asia.  Neither  the  Russian 
hterature  nor  the  Russian  language  and  writing, 
nor  the  Russian  civiHzation  as  a  whole  have  the 
qualities  to  make  them  irresistible  to  the  energet- 
ic and  intelligent  millions  of  the  far  east.  The 
chances  seem  altogether  against  the  existence  of 
a  great  Slavonic  power  in  the  world  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  twenty-first  century.  They  seem, 
at  the  first  glance^  to  lie  just  as  heavily  in  favor 
of  an  aggressive  Pan-Germanic  power  struggling 
towards  a  great  and  commanding  position  athwart 
Central  Europe  and  Western  Asia,  and  turning 
itself  at  last  upon  the  defeated  Slavonic  disorder. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  at  present  the  Ger- 
mans, with  the  doubtful  exception  of  the  United 
States,  have  the  most  efficient  middle  class  in  the 
world;  their  rapid  economic  progress  is  to  a  very 
large  extent,  indeed,  a  triumph  of  intelligence,  and 
their  political  and  probably  their  military  and 
naval  services  are  still  conducted  with  a  capacity 
and  breadth  of  view  that  find  no  parallel  in  the 
world.  But  the  very  efficiency  of  the  German 
as  a  German  to-day,  and  the  habits  and  traditions 
of  victory  he  has  accumulated  for  nearly  forty 
years,  may  prove  in  the  end  a  very  doubtful  bless- 
ing to  Europe  as  a  whole,  or  even  to  his  own  grand- 
children. Geographical  contours,  economic  forces, 
the  trend  of  invention  and  social  development, 
point  to  a  unification  of  all  Western  Europe,  but 
they  certainly  do  not  point  to  its  Germanization. 

274 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

I  have  already  given  reasons  for  anticipating  that 
the  French  language  may  not  only  hold  its  own, 
but  prevail  against  German  in  Western  Europe. 
And  there  are  certain  other  obstacles  in  the  waj^ 
even  of  the  union  of  indisputable  Germans.  One 
element  in  Germany's  present  efficiency  must 
become  more  and  more  of  an  encumbrance  as  the 
years  pass.  The  Germanic  idea  is  deeply  inter- 
woven with  the  traditional  empire,  and  with  the 
martinet  methods  of  the  Prussian  monarchy. 
The  intellectual  development  of  the  Germans  is 
defined  to  a  very  large  extent  by  a  court-directed 
officialdom.  In  many  things  that  court  is  still 
inspired  by  the  noble  traditions  of  education  and 
discipline  that  come  from  the  days  of  German 
adversity,  and  the  predominance  of  the  imperial 
will  does,  no  doubt,  give  a  unity  of  purpose  to 
German  policy  and  action  that  adds  greatly  to 
its  efficacj^  But  for  a  capable  ruler,  even  more 
than  for  a  radiantly  stupid  monarch,  the  price  a 
nation  must  finally  pay  is  heavy.  Most  energetic 
and  capable  people  are  a  little  intolerant  of  un- 
S3^mpathetic  capacity,  are  apt  on  the  under  side 
of  their  egotism  to  be  jealous,  assertive,  and  ag- 
gressive. In  the  present  empire  of  German}^ 
there  are  no  other  great  figures  to  balance  the 
imperial  personage,  and  I  do  not  see  how  other 
great  figures  are  likely  to  arise.  A  great  number 
of  fine  and  capable  persons  must  be  failing  to 
develop,  failing  to  tell,  under  the  shadow  of  this 

275 


ANTICIPATIONS 

too  prepotent  monarchy.  There  are  certain  Umit- 
ing  restrictions  imposed  upon  Germans  through 
the  imperial  activity,  that  must  finally  be  bad  for 
the  intellectual  atmosphere  which  is  Germany's 
ultimate  strength.  For  example,  the  Emperor 
professes  a  violent  and  grotesque  Christianity 
with  a  ferocious  pro-Teutonic  father  and  a  negli- 
gible son,  and  the  public  mind  is  warped  into  con- 
formity with  the  finally  impossible  cant  of  this 
eccentric  creed.  His  imperial  Majest5'^'s  disposi- 
tion to  regard  criticism  as  hostility  stifles  the 
public  thought  of  Germany.  He  interferes  in 
university  affairs  and  in  literary  and  artistic 
matters  with  a  quite  remarkable  confidence  and 
incalculable  consequences.  The  inertia  of  a  cen- 
tury carries  him  and  his  Germany  onward  from 
success  to  success,  but  for  all  that  one  may  doubt 
whether  the  extraordinary  intellectuality  that 
distinguished  the  German  atmosphere  in  the  early 
years  of  the  century,  and  in  which  such  men  as 
Blumenthal  and  Moltke  grew  to  greatness,  in 
which  Germany  grew  to  greatness,  is  not  steadily 
fading  in  the  heat  and  blaze  of  the  imperial  sun- 
shine. Discipline  and  education  have  carried 
Germany  far;  they  are  essential  things,  but  an 
equally  essential  need  for  the  coming  time  is  a 
free  play  for  men  of  initiative  and  imagination. 
Is  Germany  to  her  utmost  possibility  making 
capable  men?  That,  after  all,  is  the  vital  question, 
and  not  whether  her  policy  is  wise  or  foolish,  or 

276 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

her  commercial  development  inflated  or  sound.  Or 
is  Germany  doing  no  more  than  cash  the  promises 
of  those  earlier  days? 

After  all,  I  do  not  see  that  she  is  in  a  greatly 
stronger  position  than  was  France  in  the  early 
sixties,  and,  indeed,  in  many  respects  her  present 
predominance  is  curiously  analagous  to  that  of 
the  French  empire  in  those  years.  Death  at  any 
time  may  end  the  career  of  the  present  ruler  of 
Germany — there  is  no  certain  insurance  of  one 
single  life.  This  withdrawal  woidd  leave  Ger- 
many organized  entirely  with  reference  to  a  court, 
and  there  is  no  trustworthy  guarantee  that  the 
succeeding  royal  personality  may  not  be  some- 
thing infiniteljT^  more  vain  and  aggressive,  or 
something  weakly  self-indulgent  or  unpatriotic 
and  morally  indifferent.  Much  has  been  done 
in  the  past  of  Germany,  the  infinitely  levSs  exact- 
ing past,  by  means  of  the  tutor,  the  chamberlain, 
the  chancellor,  the  wide-seeing  power  beyond  the 
throne,  who  very  unselfishly  intrigues  his  monarch 
in  the  way  that  he  should  go.  But  that  sort  of 
thing  is  remarkably  like  writing  a  letter  by  means 
of  a  pen  held  in  lazy  tongs  instead  of  the  hand. 
A  very  easily  imagined  series  of  accidents  may 
place  the  destinies  of  Germany  in  such  lazy  tongs 
again.  When  that  occasion  comes,  will  the  new 
class  of  capable  men  on  which  we  have  convinced 
ourselves  in  these  Anticipations  the  future  de- 
pends— will  it  be  read37^  for  its  enlarged  responsi- 

277 


ANTICIPATIONS 

bilities,  or  will  the  flower  of  its  possible  members  be 
in  prison  for  l^se  majejsl^,  or  naturalized  English- 
men or  naturalized  Americans  or  troublesome 
privates  under  officers  of  indisputably  aristocratic 
birth,  or  well-broken  laborers,  won  "back  to  the 
land,"  under  the  auspices  of  an  agrarian  league? 

In  another  way  the  intensely  monarchical  and 
aristocratic  organization  of  the  German  empire 
will  stand  in  the  waj^  of  the  political  synthesis  of 
greater  Germany.  Indispensable  factors  in  that 
synthesis  will  be  Holland  and  Switzerland — little, 
advantageously  situated  peoples,  saturated  with 
ideas  of  personal  freedom.  One  can  imagine  a 
German  Swiss,  at  any  rate,  merging  himself  in  a 
great  Pan-Germanic  republican  state,  but  to  bow 
the  knee  to  the  luridl}^  decorated  God  of  his  im- 
perial Majest3^'s  fathers  will  be  an  altogether 
more  difficult  exploit  for  a  self-respecting  man. 

Moreover,  before  Germany  can  unify  to  the  east 
she  must  fight  the  Russian,  and  to  unify  to  the 
west  she  must  fight  the  French  and  perhaps  the 
English,  and  she  may  have  to  fight  a  combination 
of  these  powers.  I  think  the  military  strength  of 
France  is  enormously  underrated.  Upon  this 
matter  M.  Bloch  should  be  read.  Indisputably 
the  French  were  beaten  in  1870,  indisputably  they 
have  fallen  behind  in  their  long  struggle  to  main- 
tain themselves  equal  with  the  English  on  the 
sea,  but  neither  of  these  things  efface  the  future 
of  the  French.     The  disasters  of  1870  were  prob- 

278 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

ably  of  the  utmost  benefit  to  the  altogether  too 
sanguine  French  imagination.  They  cleared  the 
French  mind  of  the  delusion  that  personal  im- 
perialism is  the  way  to  do  the  desirable  thing,  a 
delusion  many  Germans  (and,  it  would  seem,  a  few 
queer  Englishmen  and  still  queerer  Americans) 
entertain.  The  French  have  done  much  to  dem- 
onstrate the  possibility  of  a  stable  military  re- 
public. They  have  disp>osed  of  crown  and  court, 
and  held  themselves  in  order  for  thirty  good  years ; 
they  have  dissociated  their  national  life  from  any 
form  of  religious  profession;  they  have  contrived 
a  freedom  of  thought  and  writing  that,  in  spite  of 
much  conceit  to  the  contrary,  is  quite  impossible 
among  the  English  -  speaking  peoples.  I  find  no 
reason  to  doubt  the  implication  of  M.  Bloch  that 
on  land  to-day  the  French  are  relatively  far  stronger 
than  they  were  in  1870,  that  the  evolution  of  rhili- 
tary  expedients  has  been  all  in  favor  of  the  French 
character  and  intelligence,  and  that  even  a  single- 
handed  war  between  France  and  Germany  to-day 
might  have  a  very  different  issue  from  that  former 
struggle.  In  such  a  conflict  it  will  be  Germany, 
and  not  France,  that  will  have  pawned  her  strength 
to  the  English-speaking  peoples  on  the  high  seas. 
And  France  will  not  fight  alone.  She  will  fight 
for  Switzerland  or  Luxembourg,  or  the  mouth 
of  the  Rhine.  She  will  fight  with  the  gravity  of 
remembered  humiliations;  with  the  whole  awakened 
Slav  race  at  the  back  of  her  antagonist,  and  very 

279 


ANTICIPATIONS 

probably  with  the  support  of  the  English-speaking 
peoples. 

It  must  be  pointed  out  how  strong  seems  the 
tendency  of  the  German  empire  to  repeat  the  his- 
tory of  Holland  upon  a  larger  scale  While  the 
Dutch  poured  out  all  their  strength  upon  the  seas, 
in  a  conflict  with  the  English  that  at  the  utmost 
could  give  them  only  trade,  they  let  the  possibilities 
of  a  great  Low  German  synthesis  pass  utterly  out 
of  being.  (In  those  days  Low  Germanj'^  stretched 
to  Arras  and  Douay. )  They  positively  dragged  the 
English  into  the  number  of  their  enemies.  And 
to-day  the  Germans  invade  the  sea  with  a  threat 
and  intention  that  will  certainly  create  a  counter- 
vailing American  navy,  fundamentally  modify  the 
policy  of  Great  Britain,  such  as  it  is,  and  very 
possibly  go  far  to  effect  the  synthesis  of  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples. 

So  involved,  I  do  not  see  that  the  existing  Ger- 
manic synthesis  is  likely  to  prevail  in  the  close 
economic  unity,  the  urban  region  that  will  arise 
in  Western  Europe.  I  imagine  that  the  German 
empire  —  that  is,  the  organized  expression  of 
German  aggression  to-day — will  be  either  shattered 
or  weakened  to  the  pitch  of  great  compromises  by 
a  series  of  wars  by  land  and  sea ;  it  will  be  forced 
to  develop  the  autonomy  of  its  rational  middle 
class  in  the  struggles  that  will  render  these  com- 
promises possible,  and  it  will  be  finally  not  im- 
perial German  ideas,  but  central  European  ideas 

280 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

possibly  more  akin  to  Swiss  conceptions,  a  civilized 
republicanism  finding  its  clearest  expression  in 
the  French  language,  that  will  be  established  upon 
a  bi-lingual  basis  throughout  Western  Euiope, 
and  increasingly  predominant  over  the  whole 
European  mainland  and  the  Mediterranean  basin, 
as  the  twentieth  century  closes.  The  splendid 
dream  of  a  Federal  Europe,  which  opened  the 
nineteenth  century  for  France,  may  perhaps, 
after  all,  come  to  something  like  realization  at 
the  opening  of  the  twenty-first.  But  just  how 
long  these  things  take,  just  how  easily  or  violently 
they  are  brought  about,  depends,  after  all,  entirely 
upon  the  rise  in  general  intelligence  in  Europe. 
An  ignorant,  a  merely  trained  or  a  merely  cultured 
people,  will  not  understand  these  coalescences, 
will  fondle  old  animosities  and  stage  hatreds, 
and  for  such  a  people  there  must  needs  be  disaster, 
forcible  conformities,  and  war.  Europe  will  have 
her  Irelands  as  well  as  her  Scotlands,  her  Irelands 
of  unforgettable  wrongs,  kicking,  squalling,  bawl- 
ing most  desolatingly,  for  nothing  that  any  one 
can  understand.  There  will  be  great  scope  for 
the  share-holding  dilettanti,  great  opportunities 
for  literary  quacks,  in  "national"  movements, 
language  leagues,  picturesque  plotting,  and  the 
invention  of  such  "national"  costumes  as  the 
world  has  never  seen.  The  cry  of  the  little  nations 
will  go  up  to  heaven,  asserting  the  inalienable 
right  of  all  little  nations  to  sit  down  firmJy  in  the 

281 


ANTICIPATIONS 

middle  of  the  high-road,  in  the  midst  of  the  thick  ^ 
ening  traffic,  and  with  all  their-  dear  little  toys 
about  them,  play  and  play — just  as  they  used  to 
play  before  the  road  had  come. 

And  while  the  great  states  of  the  continent  of 
Europe  are  hammering  down  their  obstructions  of 
language  and  national  tradition  or  raising  the 
educational  level  above  them  until  a  working 
unity  is  possible,  and  while  the  reconstruction  of 
Eastern  Asia — whether  that  be  under  Russian, 
Japanese,  English,  or  native  Chinese  direction — 
struggles  towards  attainment,  will  there  also  be  a 
great  synthesis  of  the  English-speaking  peoples 
going  on?  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  there 
will  be  such  a  synthesis,  and  that  the  head  and 
centre  of  the  new  unity  will  be  the  great  urban 
region  that  is  developing  between  Chicago  and  the 
Atlantic  and  which  will  lie  mainly,  but  not  entirely, 
south  of  the  St.  Lawrence.  Inevitably,  T  think, 
that  region  must  become  the  intellectual,  political, 
and  industrial  centre  of  any  permanent  unifica- 
tion of  the  English-speaking  states.  There  will, 
I  believe,  develop  about  that  centre  a  great  federa- 
tion of  white  English-speaking  peoples,  a  federa- 
tion having  America  north  of  Mexico  as  its  central 
mass  (a  federation  that  may  conceivably  include 
Scandinavia),  and  its  federal  government  will  sus- 
tain a  common  fleet,  and  protect  or  dominate  or 
actually  administer  most  or  all  of  the  non-white 
states  of  the  present  British  empire,  and  in  ad- 

282 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHEvSIS 

dition  much  of  the  South  and  Middle  Pacific,  the 
East  and  West  Indies,  the  rest  of  America,  and 
the  larger  part  of  black  Africa.  Quite  apart  from 
the  dominated  races,  such  an  English-speaking 
state  should  have  by  the  century-end  a  practically 
homogeneous  citizenship  of  at  least  a  hundred 
million  sound-bodied  and  educated  and  capable 
men.  It  should  be  the  first  of  the  three  powers 
of  the  world,  and  it  should  face  the  organizing 
sjm  theses  of  Europe  and  Eastern  Asia  with  an 
intelligent  sympath3^  By  the  year  2000,  all  its 
common  citizens  should  certainly  be  in  touch 
with  the  thought  of  Continental  Europe  through 
the  medium  of  French;  its  English  language 
should  be  already  rooting  firmly  through  all  the 
world  beyond  its  confines,  and  its  statesmanship 
should  be  preparing  openly  and  surely,  and 
discussing  calmly  with  the  public  mind  of  the 
European,  and  probably  of  the  yellow  state,  the 
possible  coalescences  and  conventions,  the  oblit- 
eration of  custom-houses,  the  homologization  of 
laws  and  coinage  and  measures,  and  the  mitiga- 
tion of  monopolies  and  special  claims,  bj^  which 
the  final  peace  of  the  world  may  be  assured  for- 
ever. Such  a  synthesis,  at  any  rate,  of  the  peoples 
now  using  the  English  tongue,  I  regard  not  only 
as  a  possible,  but  as  a  probable,  thing.  The 
positive  obstacles  to  its  achievement,  great  though 
they  are,  are  yet  trivial  in  comparison  with  the 
obstructions   to   that   lesser   European    synthesis 

283 


ANTICIPATIONS 

we  have  ventured  to  forecast.  The  greater  ob- 
stacle is  negative,  it  Hes  in  the  want  of  stimulus, 
in  the  lax  prosperity  of  most  of  the  constituent 
states  of  such  a  union.  But  such  a  stimulus, 
the  renascence  of  Eastern  Asia,  or  a  great  German 
fleet  upon  the  ocean,  may  presently  supply. 

Now  all  these  three  great  coalescences,  this  shriv- 
elling up  and  vanishing  of  boundary  lines,  will  be 
the  outward  and  visible  accompaniment  of  that 
inward  and  social  reorganization  which  it  is  the 
main  object  of  these  Anticipations  to  display. 
I  have  sought  to  show  that  in  peace  and  war  alike 
a  process  has  been  and  is  at  work,  a  process  with 
all  the  inevitableness  and  all  the  patience  of  a- 
natural  force,  whereby  the  great  swollen,  shapeless, 
hypertrophied  social  mass  of  to-day  must  give  birth 
at  last  to  a  naturally  and  informally  organized, 
educated  class,  an  unprecedented  sort  of  people, 
a  new  republic  dominating  the  world.  It  will 
be  none  of  our  ostensible  governments  that  will 
effect  this  great  clearing  up;  it  will  be  the  mass 
of  power  and  intelligence  altogether  outside  the 
official  state  systems  of  to-daj^  that  will  make  this 
great  clearance  a  new  social  Hercules  that  will 
str£ingle  the  serpents  of  war  and  national  ani- 
mosity in  his  cradle. 

Now  the  more  one  descends  from  the  open  up- 
lands of  wide  generalization  to  the  parallel  jungle 
of  particulars,  the  more  dangerous  does  the  road 
of   prophesying   become,    yet   nevertheless   there 

284 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

may  be  some  possibility  of  speculating  how,  in 
the  case  of  the  English-speaking  synthesis  at 
least,  this  effective  new  republic  may  begin 
visibly  to  shape  itself  out  and  appear.  It  will 
appear  first,  I  believe,  as  a  conscious  organization 
of  intelligent  and  quite  possibly  in  some  cases 
wealthy  men,  as  a  movement  having  distinct 
social  and  political  aims,  confessedly  ignoring 
most  of  the  existing  apparatus  of  political  control, 
or  using  it  only  as  an  incidental  implement  in  the 
attainment  of  these  aims.  It  will  be  very  loosely 
organized  in  its  earlier  stages,  a  mere  movement 
of  a  number  of  people  in  a  certain  direction,  who 
will  presently  discover  with  a  sort  of  surprise  the 
common  object  towards  which  they  are  all  moving. 
Already  there  are  some  interesting  aspects  of 
public  activity  that,  diverse  though  their  aims 
may  seem,  do  nevertheless  serve  to  show  the  pos- 
sible line  of  development  of  this  new  republic 
in  the  coming  time.  For  example,  as  a  sort  of 
preliminary  sigh  before  the  stirring  of  a  larger 
movement,  there  are  various  Anglo-American 
movements  and  leagues  to  be  noted.  Associa- 
tions for  entertaining  travelling  samples  of  the 
American  leisure  class  in  guaranteed  English 
country  houses,  for  bringing  them  into  momentary 
physical  contact  with  real  titled  persons  at  lunches 
and  dinners,  and  for  having  them  collectively  lect- 
ured by  respectable  English  authors  and  divines, 
are  no  doubt  trivial  things  enough;  but  a  snob 
^     285 


ANTICIPATIONS 

sometimes  shows  how  the  wind  blows  better  than 
a  serious  man.  The  empire  may -catch  the  Amer- 
ican as  the  soldier  caught  the  Tartar.  There 
is  something  very  much  more  spacious  than  such 
things  as  this,  latent  in  both  the  British  and  the 
American  mind,  and  observable,  for  instance, 
in  the  altered  tone  of  the  presses  of  both  countries 
since  the  VenezAiela  message  and  the  Spanish- 
American  War,  Certain  projects  of  a  much  ampler 
sort  have  already  been  put  forward.  An  interest- 
ing proposal  of  an  interchangeable  citizenship, 
so  that  with  a  change  of  domicile  an  Englishman 
should  have  the  chance  of  becoming  a  citizen  of  the 
United  States,  and  an  American  a  British  citizen  or 
a  voter  in  an  autonomous  British  colony,  for  ex- 
ample, has  been  made.  Such  schemes  will,  no 
doubt,  become  frequent,  and  will  afford  much 
scope  for  discussion  in  both  countries  during  the 
next  decade  or  so.*  The  American  constitution 
and  the  British  crown  and  constitution  have  to 
be  modified  or  shelved  at  some  stage  in  this 
synthesis,  and  for  certain  types  of  intelligence 
there  could  be  no  more  attractive  problem.  Cer- 
tain curious  changes  in  the  colonial  point  of  view 
will  occur  as  these  discussions  open  out.  The 
United  States  of  America  are  rapidly  taking,  or 

•  I  foresee  great  scope  for  the  ingenious  persons  who  write 
so  abundantly  to  the  London  evening  papers  upon  etymological 
points,  issues  in  heraldry,  and  the  correct  Union  Jack,  in  the 
very  pleasing  topic  of  a  possible  Anglo-American  flag  (for  use 
at  first  only  on  unofficial  occasions). 

286 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

have  already  taken,  the  ascendency  in  the  iron 
and  steel  and  electrical  industries  out  of  the  hands 
of  the  British;  they  are  developing  a  far  ampler 
and  more  thorough  system  of  higher  scientific 
education  than  the  British,  and  the  spirit  of  ef- 
ficiency percolating  from  their  more  efficient  busi- 
nesses is  probably  higher  in  their  public  services. 
These  things  render  the  transfer  of  the  present 
mercantile  and  naval  ascendency  of  Great  Britain 
to  the  United  States  during  the  next  two  or  three 
decades  a  very  probable  thing,  and  when  this  is 
accomplished  the  problem  how  far  colonial  loyalty 
is  the  fruit  of  royal  visits  and  sporadic  knight- 
hoods, and  how  far  it  has  relation  to  the  existence 
of  a  predominant  fleet,  will  be  near  its  solution. 
An  interesting  point  about  such  discussions  as 
this,  in  which,  indeed,  in  all  probability  the  nascent 
consciousness  of  the  new  republic  will  emerge, 
will  be  the  solution  this  larger  synthesis  will  offer 
to  certain  miserable  difficulties  of  the  present  time. 
Government  by  the  elect  of  the  first  families  of 
Great  Britain  has  in  the  last  hundred  years  made 
Ireland  and  South  Africa  two  open  sores  of  ir- 
reconcilable wrong.  These  two  English-speaking 
commiuiities  will  never  rest  and  never  emerge  from 
wretchedness  under  the  vacillating  vote-catching 
incapacity  of  British  imperialism  and  it  is  im- 
possible that  the  British  power,  having  embittered 
them,  should  ever  dare  to  set  them  free.  But 
within  such  an  ampler  synthesis  as  the  new  re- 

287 


ANTICIPATIONS 

public  will  seek,  these  states  could  emerge  to  an 
equal  fellowship  that  would  take  all  the  bitterness 
from  their  unforgettable  past. 

Another  type  of  public  activity  which  fore- 
shadows an  a.spect  under  which  the  new  republic 
will  emerge  is  to  be  found  in  the  unofficial  or- 
ganizations that  have  come  into  existence  in  Great 
Britain  to  watch  and  criticise  various  public  de- 
partments. There  is,  for  example,  the  navy 
league,  a  body  of  intelligent  and  active  persons 
with  a  distinctly  expert  qualification  which  has 
intervened  very  effectively  in  naval  control  during 
the  last  few  j^^ears.  There  is  also  at  present  a  vast 
amount  of  disorganized  but  quite  intelligent  dis- 
content with  the  tawdry  futilities  of  army  reform 
that  occupy  the  War  Office.  It  becomes  apparent 
that  there  is  no  hope  of  a  fully  efficient  and  well- 
equipped  official  army  under  parliamentary  govern- 
ment, and  with  that  realization  there  will  naturally 
appear  a  disposition  to  seek  some  way  to  military 
efficiency,  as  far  as  is  legally  possible,  outside 
War  Office  control.  Already  recruiting  is  falling 
off;  it  will  probably  fall  off  more  and  more  as  the 
patriotic  emotions  evoked  by  the  Boer  war  fade 
away,  and  no  trivial  addition  to  pay  or  privilege 
will  restore  it.  Elementary  education  has  at  last 
raised  the  intelligence  of  the  British  lower  classes 
to  a  point  when  the  prospect  of  fighting  in  distant 
lands  under  imsuitably  educated  British  officers 
of  means  and  gentility  with  a  defective  War  Office 

288 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

equipment  and  inferior  weapons  has  lost  much 
of  its  romaifltic  glamour.  But  an  unofficial  body- 
that  set  itself  to  the  establishment  of  a  school  of 
military  science,  to  the  sane  organization  and 
criticism  of  military  experiments  in  tactics  and 
equipment,  and  to  the  raising  for  experimental 
purposes  of  volunteer  companies  and  battalions, 
would  find  no  lack  of  men.  .  .  .  What  an  un- 
official syndicate  of  capable  persons  of  the  new 
sort  may  do  in  these  matters  has  been  shown  in 
the  case  of  the  turhinia,  the  germ  of  an  absolute 
revolution  in  naval  construction. 

Such  attempts  at  unofficial  soldiering  would  be 
entirely  in  the  spirit  in  which  I  believe  the  new 
republic  will  emerge,  but  it  is  in  another  line  of 
activity  that  the  growing  new  consciousness  will 
presently  be  much  more  distinctly  apparent.  It  is 
increasingly  evident  that  to  organize  and  control 
public  education  is  beyond  the  power  of  a  demo- 
cratic government.  The  meanly  equipped  and 
pretentiously  conducted  private  schools  of  Great 
Britain,  staffed  with  ignorant  and  incapable  young 
men.  exist,  on  the  other  hand,  to  witness  that  public 
education  is  no  matter  to  be  left  to  merely  com- 
mercial enterprise  working  upon  parental  ignorance 
and  social  prejudice.  The  necessary  condition  to 
the  effective  development  of  the  new  republic  is 
a  universally  accessible,  spacious,  and  varied  edu- 
cational system  working  in  an  atmosphere  of  ef- 
ficient criticism  and  general  intellectual  activity. 
If  289 


ANTICIPATIONS 

Schools  alone  are  of  no  avail,  universities  are 
merely  dens  of  the  higher  cramming,  unless  the 
school-masters  and  school-mistresses  and  lecturers 
are  in  touch  with  and  under  the  light  of  an  abun- 
dant, contemporary,  and  fully  adult  intellectuality. 
At  present,  in  Great  Britain  at  least,  the  head- 
masters intrusted  with  the  education  of  the  bulk 
of  the  influential  men  of  the  next  decades  are  con- 
spicuously second-rate  men,  forced  and  etiolated 
creatures,  scholarship  boys  manured  with  an- 
notated editions,  and  brought  up  under  and  pro- 
tected from  all  current  illumination  by  the  kale- 
pot  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  Many  of  them 
are  less  capable  teachers  and  even  less  intelligent 
men  than  many  board  school  teachers.  There  is, 
however,  urgent  need  of  an  absolutely  new  type 
of  school — a  school  that  shall  be,  at  least,  so  skil- 
fully conducted  as  to  supply  the  necessary  train- 
ing in  mathematics,  dialectics,  languages,  and 
drawing,  and  the  necessary  knowledge  of  science, 
without  either  consuming  all  the  leisure  of  the 
boy  or  destroying  his  individuality,  as  it  is  de- 
stroyed by  the  ignorant  and  pretentious  blunderers 
of  to-day;  and  there  is  an  equally  manifest  need 
of  a  new  type  of  university,  something  other  than  a 
happy  fastness  for  those  precociously  brilliant 
creatures — creatures  whose  brilliance  is  too  often 
the  hectic  indication  of  a  constitutional  tmsound- 
ness  of  mind — who  can  "get  in"  before  the  port- 
cullis  of    the    nineteenth    birthday    falls.     These 

290 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

new  educational  elements  may  either  grow  slowly 
through  the  steady  and  painful  pressure  of  re- 
morseless facts,  or,  as  the  effort  to  evoke  the  new 
republic  becomes  more  conscious  and  deliberate, 
they  may  be  rapidly  brought  into  being  by  the 
conscious  endeavors  of  capable  men.  Assuredly 
they  will  never  be  developed  by  the  wisdom  of  the 
governments  of  the  gray.  It  may  be  pointed  out 
that  in  an  individual  and  disorganized  way  a 
growing  sense  of  such  needs  is  already  displayed. 
Such  great  business  managers  as  Mr.  Andrew 
Carnegie,  for  example,  and  many  other  of  the 
wealthy  efficients  of  the  United  States  of  America, 
are  displaying  a  strong  disinclination  to  found 
families  of  f unctionless  share-holders,  and  a  strong 
disposition  to  contribute,  by  means  of  colleges, 
libraries,  and  splendid  foundations,  to  the  future 
of  the  whole  English-speaking  world.  Of  course, 
Mr.  Carnegie  is  not  an  educational  specialist,  and 
his  good  intentions  will  be  largely  exploited  by  the 
energetic  mediocrities  who  control  our  educational 
affairs.  But  it  is  the  intention  that  concerns  us 
now,  and  not  the  precise  method  or  effect.  Indis- 
putably these  rich  Americans  are  at  a  fundamental- 
ly important  work  in  these  endowments,  and  as  in- 
disputably many  of  their  successors — I  do  not  mean 
the  heirs  to  their  private  wealth,  but  the  men  of  the 
same  type  who  will  play  their  rdle  in  the  coming 
years — will  carry  on  this  spacious  work  with  a  wider 
prospect  and  a  clearer  common  understanding. 

291 


ANTICIPATIONS 

The  establishment  of  modern  and  efficient  schools 
is  alone  not  sufficient  for  the  intellectual  needs  of 
the  coming  time.  The  school  and  university  are 
merely  the  preparation  for  the  life  of  mental  activity 
in  which  the  citizen  of  the  coming  state  will  live. 
The  three  years  of  university  and  a  lifetime  of 
garrulous  stagnation  which  constitutes  the  mind's 
history  of  many  a  public  school-master,  for  ex- 
ample, and  most  of  the  clergy  to-day,  will  be  im- 
possible under  the  new  needs.  The  old-fashioned 
university,  secure  in  its  omniscience,  merely  taught; 
the  university  of  the  coming  time  will,  as  its  larger 
function,  criticise  and  learn.  It  will  be  organized 
for  research — for  the  criticism,  that  is,  of  thought 
and  nature.  And  a  subtler  and  a  greater  task 
before  those  who  will  presently  swear  allegiance 
to  the  new  republic  is  to  aid  and  stimulate  that 
process  of  sound  adult  mental  activity  which  is 
the  cardinal  element  in  human  life.  After  all,  in 
spite  of  the  pretentious  impostors  who  trade  upon 
the  claim,  literature — contemporary  literature — is 
the  breath  of  civilized  life ;  and  those  who  sincerely 
think  and  write,  the  salt  of  the  social  body.  To 
mumble  over  the  past,  to  live  on  the  classics,  how- 
ever splendid,  is  senility.  The  new  republic, 
therefore,  will  sustain  its  authors.  In  the  past 
the  author  lived  within  the  limits  of  his  patron's 
susceptibility,  and  led  the  worW,  so  far  as  he  did 
lead  it,  from  that  cage.  In  the  present  he  lives 
within  the  limits  of  a  particularly  distressful  and 

292 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

ill-managed  market.  He  must  please  and  interest 
the  public  before  he  may  reason  with  it,  and  even 
to  reach  the  public  ear  involves  other  assiduities 
than  writing.  To  write  one's  best  is  surely  suf- 
ficient work  for  a  man,  but  unless  the  author  is 
prepared  to  add  to  his  literary  toil  the  correspond- 
ence and  alert  activity  of  a  business  man,  he  may 
find  that  no  measure  of  acceptance  will  save  him 
from  a  mysterious  poverty.  Publishing  has  be- 
come a  trade,  differing  only  from  the  trade  in 
pork  or  butter  in  the  tradesman's  careless  book- 
keeping and  his  professed  indifference  to  the  quality 
of  his  goods.  But  unless  the  whole  mass  of  ar- 
gument in  these  Anticipations  is  false,  publishing 
is  as  much,  or  even  more,  of  a  public  concern  than 
education,  and  as  little  to  be  properly  discharged 
by  private  men  working  for  profit.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  not  to  be  undertaken  by  a  government 
of  the  gray,  for  a  confusion  cannot  undertake  to 
clarify  itself;  it  is  an  activity  in  which  the  new 
republic  will  necessarily  engage. 

The  men  of  the  new  republic  will  be  intelligently 
critical  men,  and  they  will  have  the  courage  of  their 
critical  conclusions.  For  the  sake  of  the  English 
tongue,  for  the  sake  of  the  English  peoples,  they 
will  set  themselves  to  put  temptingly  within  the 
reach  of  all  readers  of  the  tongue,  and  all  possible 
readers  of  the  tongue,  an  abundance  of  living 
literature.  They  will  endeavor  to  shape  great 
publishing  trusts  and  associations  that  will  have 

293 


ANTICIPATIONS 

the  same  relation  to  the  pubHvshing  office  of  to-day 
that  a  medical  association  has  to  a  patent-medicine 
dealer.  They  will  not  only  publish,  but  sell; 
their  efficient  book-shops,  their  efficient  system 
of  book-distribution  will  replace  the  present  hap- 
hazard dealings  of  quite  illiterate  persons  under 
whose  shadows  people  in  the  provinces  live.*  If 
one  of  these  publishing  groups  decides  that  a 
book,  new  or  old,  is  of  value  to  the  public  mind,  I 
conceive  the  copyright  will  be  secured  and  the 
book  produced  all  over  the  world  in  every  variety 
of  form  and  price  that  seems  necessary  to  its  ex- 
haustive sale.  Moreover,  these  publishing  as- 
sociations will  sustain  spaciously  conceived  or- 
gans of  opinion  and  criticism,  which  will  begin 
by  being  patiently  and  persistently  good,  and  so 
develop  into  power.  And  the  more  distinctly  the 
new  republic  emerges,  the  less  danger  there  will 
be  of  these  associations  being  allowed  to  outlive 
their  service  in  a  state  of  ossified  authority.  New 
groups  of  men  and  new  phases  of  thought  will 

*  In  a  large  town  like  Folkestone,  for  example,  it  is  practically 
impossible  to  buy  any  book  but  a  "  boomed  "  novel  unless  one 
has  ascertained  the  names  of  the  author,  the  book,  the  edition, 
and  the  publisher.  There  is  no  index  in  existence  kept  up  to 
date  that  supplies  these  particulars.  If,  for  example,  one  wants 
— as  I  want  (l)  to  read  all  that  I  have  not  read  of  the  works  of 
Mr.  Frank  Stockton,  (2)  to  read  a  book  of  essays  by  Professor 
Ray  Lankaster  the  title  of  which  I  have  forgotten,  and  (3)  to 
buy  the  most  convenient  edition  of  the  works  of  Swift,  one  has 
to  continue  wanting  until  the  British  Museum  Library  chances 
to  get  in  one's  way.  The  book-selling  trade  supplies  no  infor- 
mation at  all  on  these  points. 

294 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

organize  their  publishing  associations  as  children 
learn  to  talk* 

And  while  the  new  republic  is  thus  developing 
its  idea  of  itself  and  organizing  its  mind,  it  will  also 
be  growing  out  of  the  confused  and  intricate  busi- 
nesses and  undertakings  and  public  services  of  the 
present  time,  into  a  recognizable  material  body. 

*  One  of  the  least  satisfactory  features  of  the  intellectual  at- 
mosphere of  the  present  time  is  the  absence  of  good  controversy. 
To  follow  closely  an  honest  and  subtle  controversy,  and  to  have 
arrived  at  a  definite  opinion  upon  some  general  question  of  real 
and  practical  interest  and  complicated  reference,  is  assuredly 
the  most  educational  exercise  in  the  world — I  would  go  so  far 
as  to  say  that  no  person  is  completely  educated  who  has  not 
done  as  much.  The  memorable  discussions  in  which  Huxley 
figured,  for  example,  were  extraordinarily  stimulating.  We 
lack  that  sort  of  thing  now.  A  great  number  of  people  are  ex- 
pressing conflicting  opinions  upon  all  sorts  of  things,  but  there 
is  a  quite  remarkable  shirking  of  plain  issues  of  debate.  There 
is  no  answering  back.  There  is  much  indirect  answering, 
depreciation  of  the  adversary,  attempts  to  limit  his  publicity, 
restatements  of  the  opposing  opinion  in  a  new  way,  but  no  con- 
flict in  the  lists.  We  no  longer  fight  obnoxious  views,  but  as- 
sassinate them.  From  first  to  last,  for  example,  there  has  been 
no  honest  discussion  of  the  fundamental  issues  in  the  Boer  war. 
Something  may  be  due  to  the  mvdtiplication  of  magazines  and 
newspapers,  and  the  confusion  of  opinions  that  has  scattered 
the  controversy -following  public.  It  is  much  to  be  regretted 
that  the  laws  of  copyright  and  the  methods  of  publication  stand 
in  the  way  of  annotated  editions  of  works  of  current  controversial 
value.  For  example,  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  has  assailed  the  new 
edition  of  the  Golden  Bough.  His  criticisms,  which  are,  no 
doubt,  very  shrewd  and  penetrating,  ought  to  be  accessible 
with  the  text  he  criticises.  Yet  numerous  people  will  read  his 
comments  who  will  never  read  the  Golden  Bough ;  they  will 
accept  his  dinted  sword  as  proof  of  the  slaughter  of  Mr.  Fraser, 
and  many  will  read  the  Golden  Bough  and  never  hear  of 
Mr.  Lang's  comments.  Why  should  it  be  so  hopeless  to  suggest 
an  edition  of  the  Golden  Bough  with  foot-notes  by  Mr.  Lang 

295 


ANTICIPATIONS 

The  synthetic  process  that  is  going  on  in  the  case 
of  many  of  the  larger  of  the  businesses  of  the  world, 
that  formation  of  trusts  that  bulks  so  large  in 
American  discussion,  is  of  the  utmost  significance 
in  this  connection.  Conceivably  the  first  impulse 
to  form  trusts  came  from  a  mere  desire  to  control 
competition  and  economize  working  expenses, 
but  even  in  its  very  first  stages  this  process  of 

and  Mr.  Eraser's  replies?  There  are  all  sorts  of  books  to  which 
Mr.  Lang  might  add  foot-notes  with  infinite  benefit  to  every  one. 
Mr.  Mallock,  again,  is  going  to  explain  how  science  and  re- 
ligion stand  at  the  present  time.  If  only  some  one  would  ex- 
plain in  the  margin  how  Mr.  Mallock  stands,  the  thing  would 
be  complete.  Such  a  book,  again,  as  these  Anticipations, 
would  stand  a  vast  amount  of  controversial  foot-noting.  It 
bristles  with  pegs  for  discussion — vacant  pegs ;  it  is  written  to 
provoke.  I  hope  that  some  publisher,  sooner  or  later,  will  do 
something  of  this  kind,  and  will  give  us  not  only  the  text  of  an 
author's  work,  but  a  series  of  foot-notes  and  appendices  by 
reputable  antagonists.  The  experiment,  well  handled,  might 
prove  successful  enough  to  start  a  fashion — a  very  beneficial 
fashion  for  authors  and  readers  alike.  People  would  write 
twice  as  carefully  and  twice  as  clearly  with  that  possible  second 
edition  (with  foot-notes  by  X  and  Y)  in  view.  Imagine  The 
Impregnable  Rock  of  Holy  Scripture  as  it  might  have  been 
edited  by  the  late  Professor  Huxley ;  Froude's  edition  of  the 
Grammar  of  Assent ;  Mr.  G.  B.  Shaw's  edition  of  the  works 
of  Mr.  Lecky  ;  or  the  criticism  of  art  and  life  of  Ruskin — the  Beau- 
Lies  of  Ruskin  annotated  by  Mr.  Whistler  and  carefully  pre- 
pared for  the  press  by  Professor  William  James.  Like  the 
tomato  and  the  cucumber,  every  book  would  carry  its  antidote 
wrapped  about  it.  Impossible,  you  say.  But  is  it?  Or  is  it 
only  unprecedented?  If  novelists  will  consent  to  the  illustration 
of  their  stories  by  artists  whose  chief  aim  appears  to  be  to  con- 
tradict their  statements,  I  do  not  see  why  controversial  writers 
who  believe  their  opinions  are  correct  should  object  to  the  check- 
ing of  their  facts  and  logic  by  persons  with  a  different  way  of 
thinking.  Why  should  not  men  of  opposite  opinions  collaborate 
in  their  discussion? 

296 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

coalescence  has  passed  out  of  the  region  of  com- 
mercial operations  into  that  of  public  affairs.  The 
trust  develops  into  the  organization  under  men 
far  more  capable  than  any  sort  of  public  officials, 
of  entire  industries,  of  entire  departments  of  public 
life,  quite  outside  the  ostensible  democratic  govern- 
ment system  altogether.  The  whole  apparatus 
of  communications,  which  we  have  seen  to  be  of 
such  primary  importance  in  the  making  of  the 
future,  promises  to  pass,  in  the  case  of  the  United 
States  at  least,  out  of  the  region  of  scramble  into 
the  domain  of  deliberate  control.  Even  to-day 
the  trusts  are  taking  over  quite  consciously  the 
most  vital  national  matters.  The  American  iron 
and  steel  industries  have  been  drawn  together 
and  developed  in  a  manner  that  is  a  necessary  pre- 
liminary to  the  capture  of  the  empire  of  the  seas. 
That  end  is  declaredly  within  the  vista  of  these 
operations,  within  their  initial  design.  ThevSe 
things  are  not  the  work  of  dividend-hunting  im- 
beciles, but  of  men  who  regard  wealth  as  a  conven- 
tion, as  a  means  to  spacious  material  ends.  There 
is  an  animated  little  paper  published  in  Los  Angeles 
in  the  interests  of  Mr.  Wilshire,  which  bears  upon 
its  forefront  the  maxim,  "  Let  the  Nation  own  the 
Trusts.''  Well,  under  their  mantle  of  property, 
the  trusts  grow  continually  more  elaborate  and 
efficient  machines  of  production  and  public  service, 
while  the  formal  nation  chooses  its  bosses  and 
buttons  and  reads  its   illustrated  press.     I  must 

297 


ANTICIPATIONS 

confess  I  do  not  see  the  negro  and  the  poor  Irishman 
and  all  the  emigrant  sweepings  of  Europe,  which 
constitute  the  bulk  of  the  American  abyss,  uniting 
to  form  that  great  Socialist  party  of  w^hich  Mr. 
Wilshire  dreams,  and  with  a  little  demonstrating 
and  balloting  taking  over  the  foundry  and  the 
electrical  works,  the  engine-shed  and  the  signal- 
box,  from  the  capable  men  in  charge.  But  that  a 
confluent  system  of  trust -owned  business  organ- 
isms and  of  universities -and  reorganized  military 
and  naval  services  may  presently  discover  an 
essential  unity  of  purpose,  presently  begin  think- 
ing a  literature  and  behaving  like  a  state,  is  a 
much  more  possible  thing. 

In  its  more  developed  phases  I  seem  to  see  the 
new  republic  as  (if  I  may  use  an  expressive  bull) 
a  sort  of  outspoken  secret  society,  with  which 
even  the  prominent  men  of  the  ostensible  state 
may  be  openly  affiliated.  A  vast  number  of  men 
admit  the  need,  but  hesitate  at  the  means  of  revolu- 
tion; and  in  this  conception  of  a  slowly  growing 
new  social  order,  organized  with  open  deliberation 
within  the  substance  of  he  old,  there  are  no  doubt 
elements  of  technical  treason,  but  an  enormous 
gain  in  the  thoroughness,  effectiveness,  and  sta- 
bility of  the  possible  change. 

So  it  is,  or  at  least  in  some  such  ways,  that  I 
conceive  the  growing  sense  of  itself  which  the  new 
class  of  modern  efficients  will  develop,  will  become 
manifest  in  movements  and  concerns  that  are  now 

298 


THE    LARGER    SYNTHESIS 

heterogeneous  and  distinct,  but  will  presently 
drift  into  co-operation  and  coalescence.  This 
idea  of  a  sj/nthetic  reconstruction  within  the  bodies 
of  the  English-speaking  states  may  very  possibly 
clothe  itself  in  quite  other  formulae  than  my  phrase 
of  the  new  republic;  but  the  need  is  with  us,  the 
social  elements  are  developing  among  us,  the 
appliances  are  arranging  themselves  for  the  hands 
that  will  use  them,  and  I  cannot  but  believe  that 
the  idea  of  a  spacious  common  action  will  presently 
come.  In  a  few  years  I  believe  many  men  who 
are  now  rather  aimless — men  who  have  discon- 
solately watched  the  collapse  of  the  old  liberalism 
— will  be  clearly  telling  themselves  and  one  another 
of  their  adhesion  to  this  new  ideal.  They  will  be 
working  in  schools  and  newspaper  offices,  in  foun- 
dries and  factories,  in  colleges  and  laboratories, 
in  county  councils  and  on  school  boards — even,  it 
may  be,  in  pulpits — for  the  time  when  the  coming 
of  the  new  republic  will  be  ripe.  It  may  be  dawning 
even  in  the  schools  of  law,  because  presently  there 
will  be  a  new  and  scientific  handling  of  jurispru- 
dence. The  highly  educated  and  efficient  officers' 
mess  will  rise  mechanically  and  drink  to  the  mon- 
arch, and  sit  down  to  go  on  discussing  the  new 
republic's  growth.  I  do  not  see,  indeed,  why 
an  intelligent  monarch  himself,  in  these  days, 
should  not  waive  any  silliness  about  Divine  right 
and  all  the  ill-bred  pretensions  that  must  sit  so 
heavily  on  a  gentlemanlj'^  king,  and   come   into 

299 


ANTICIPATIONS 

the  movement  with  thcvse  others.  When' the  grow- 
ing conception  touches,  as  in  America  1  beheve  it 
has  already  touched,  the  legacy-leaving  class, 
there  will  be  fewer  new  asylums  perhaps,  but  more 
university  chairs. 

So  it  is  I  conceive  the  elements  of  the  new  re- 
public taking  shape  and  running  together  through 
the  social  mass,  picking  themselves  out  more 
and  more  clearly  from  the  share-holder,  the  para- 
sitic speculator,  and  the  wretched  multitudes  of 
the  abyss.  The  new  republicans  will  constitute 
an  informal  and  open  freemasonry.  In  all  sorts 
of  ways  they  will  be  influencing  and  controlling 
the  apparatus  of  the  ostensible  governments; 
they  will  be  pruning  irresponsible  property,  check- 
ing speculators,  and  controlling  the  abyssward 
drift;  but  at  that,  at  an  indirect  control,  at  any 
sort  of  fiction,  the  new  republic,  from  the  very 
nature  of  its  cardinal  ideas,  will  not  rest.  The 
clearest  and  simplest  statement,  the  clearest  and 
simplest  method,  is  inevitably  associated  with 
the  conceptions  of  that  science  upon  which  the 
new  republic  will  arise.  There  will  be  a  time, 
in  peace  it  may  be,  or  under  the  stresses  of  war- 
fare, when  the  new  republic  will  find  itself  ready 
to  arrive,  when  the  theory  will  have  been  worked  out 
and  the  details  will  be  generally  accepted,  and  the 
new  order  will  be  ripe  to  begin.  And  then,  indeed,  it 
will  begin.  What  life  or  strength  will  be  left  in  the 
old  order  to  prevent  this  new  order  beginning? 

300 


THE  FAITH,  MORALS,  AND  PUBLIC 
POLICY  OF  THE  NEW  REPUBLIC 


THE  FAITH,  MORALS,  AND  PUBLIC 
POLICY  OF  THE  NEW  REPUBLIC 


IF  the  surmise  of  a  developing  new  republic — a 
republic  that  must  ultimately  become  a  world 
state  of  capable,  rational  men,  developing  amid 
the  fading  contours  and  colors  of  our  existing 
nations  and  institutions — be,  indeed,  no  idle  dream, 
but  an  attainable  possibility  in  the  future — and  to 
that  end  it  is  that  the  preceding  Anticipations  have 
been  mainly  written — it  becomes  a  speculation  of 
very  great  interest  to  forecast  something  of  the 
general  shape  and  something  even  of  certain  de- 
tails of  that  common  body  of  opinion  which  the 
new  republic,  when  at  last  it  discovers  and  de- 
clares itself,  will  possess.  Since  we  have  sup- 
posed this  new  republic  will  already  be  conscious- 
ly and  pretty  freely  controlling  the  general  affairs 
of  humanity  before  this  century  closes,  its  broad 
principles  and  opinions  must  necessarily  shape 
and  determine  that  still  ampler  future  of  which 
the  coming  hundred  years  is  but  the  opening 
phase.     There  are  many  processes,  many  aspects 

303 


ANTICIPATIONS 

of  things,  that  are  now,  as  it  were,  in  the  domain 
of  natural  laws  and  outside  human  control,  or 
controlled  unintelligent' y  and  superstitiously,  that 
in  the  future,  in  the  days  of  the  coming  new  re- 
public, will  be  definitely  taken  in  hand  as  part  of 
the  general  work  of  humanity,  as  indeed  already, 
since  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
the  control  of  pestilence  has  been  taken  in  hand. 
And  in  particular,  there  are  certain  broad  questions 
much  under  discussion  to  which,  thus  far,  I  have 
purposely  given  a  value  disproportionately  small. 
While  the  new  republic  is  gathering  itself  to- 
gether and  becoming  aware  of  itself,  that  other 
great  element,  which  I  have  called  the  people  of 
the  abyss,  will  also  have  followed  out  its  destiny. 
For  many  decades  that  development  will  be  largely 
or  entirely  out  of  all  human  control.  To  the  multi- 
plying rejected  of  the  white  and  yellow  civilizations 
there  will  have  been  added  a  vast  proportion  of 
the  black  and  brown  races,  and  collectively  these 
masses  will  propound  the  general  question,  "  What 
will  you  do  with  us,  we  hundreds  of  millions,  who 
cannot  keep  pace  with  you?"  If  the  new  re- 
public emerges  at  all  it  will  emerge  by  grappling 
with  this  riddle;  it  must  come  into  existence  by 
the  passes  this  sphinx  will  guard.  Moreover, 
the  necessary  results  of  the  reaction  of  irresponsible 
wealth  upon  that  infirm  and  dangerous  thing,  the 
human  will,  the  spreading  moral  rot  of  gambling 
which  is  associated  with  irresponsible  wealth,  will 

304 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

have  been  working  out,  and  will  continue  to  work 
out,  so  long  as  there  is  such  a  thing  as  irrespon- 
sible wealth  pervading  the  social  body.  That. 
too,  the  new  republic  must  in  its  very  develop- 
ment overcome.  In  the  preceding  paper  it  is 
clearly  implicit  that  I  believe  that  the  new  re- 
public, as  its  consciousness  and  influence  develop 
together,  will  meet,  check,  and  control  these  things ; 
but  the  broad  principles  upon  which  the  control 
will  go,  the  nature  of  the  methods  employed,  still 
remain  to  be  deduced.  And  to  make  that  deduction 
it  is  necessary  that  the  primary  conception  of  life, 
the  fundamental,  religious,  and  moral  ideas  of 
these  predominant  men  of  the  new  time  should 
first  be  considered. 

Now,  quite  inevitably,  these  men  will  be  religious 
men.  Being  themselves — as  by  the  nature  of  the 
forces  that  have  selected  them  they  will  certainly 
be — men  of  will  and  purpose,  they  will  be  disposed 
to  find,  and  consequently  they  will  find,  an  effect  of 
purpose  in  the  totality  of  things.  Either  one  must 
believe  the  universe  to  be  one  and  systematic,  and 
held  together  by  some  omnipresent  quality,  or  one 
must  believe  it  to  be  a  casual  aggregation,  an  inco- 
herent accumulation,  with  no  unity  whatsoever 
outside  the  unity  of  the  personality  regarding  it. 
All  science  and  most  modern  religious  systems 
presuppose  the  former,  and  to  believe  the  former  is, 
to  any  one  not  too  anxious  to  quibble,  to  believe  in 
God.  But  I  believe  that  these  prevailing  men 
*»  305 


ANTICIPATIONS 

of  the  future,  like  many  of  the  saner  men  of  to- 
day having  so  formulated  their- fundamental  be- 
lief, will  presume  to  no  knowledge  whatever,  will 
presume  to  no  possibility  of  knowledge  of  the 
real  being  of  God.  They  will  have  no  positive 
definition  of  God  at  all.  They  will  certainly  not 
indulge  in  "that  something,  not  ourselves,  that 
makes  for  righteousness"  (not  defined),  or  any 
defective  claptrap  of  that  sort.  They  will  content 
themselves  with  denying  the  self-contradictory 
absurdities  of  an  obstinately  anthropomorphic 
theology,*  they  will  regard  the  whole  of  being. 


•  As,  for  example,  that  God  is  an  omniscient  mind.  This  is 
the  last  vestige  of  that  barbaric  theology  which  regarded  God 
as  a  vigorous  but  uncertain  old  gentleman  with  a  beard  and  an 
inordinate  lust  for  praise  and  propitiation.  The  modern  idea 
is,  indeed,  scarcely  more  logical  than  the  one  it  has  replaced. 
A  mind  thinks,  and  feels,  and  wills ;  it  passes  from  phase  to 
phase ;  thinking  and  willing  are  a  succession  of  mental  states 
which' follow  and  replace  one  another.  But  omniscience  is  a 
complete  knowledge,  not  only  of  the  present  state,  but  of  all 
past  and  future  states,  and,  since  it  is  all  there  at  any  moment, 
it  cannot  conceivably  pass  from  phase  to  phase ;  it  is  stagnant, 
infinite,  and  eternal.  An  omniscient  mind  is  as  impossible, 
therefore,  as  an  omnipresent  moving  body.  God  is  outside 
our  mental  scope ;  only  by  faith  can  we  attain  Him ;  our  most 
lucid  moments  serve  only  to  render  clearer  His  inaccessibility 
to  our  intelligence.  We  stand  a  Uttle  way  up  in  a  scale  of  exist- 
ences that  may,  indeed,  point  towards  Him,  but  can  never  bring 
Him  to  our  scope.  As  the  fulness  of  the  conscious  mental  exist- 
ence of  a  man  stands  to  the  subconscious  activities  of  an  amoeba 
or  of  a  visceral  ganglion  cell,  so  our  reason  forces  us  to  admit 
other  possible  mental  existences  may  stand  to  us.  But  such  an 
existence,  inconceivably  great  as  it  would  be  to  us,  would  be 
scarcely  nearer  than  a  transcendental  God  in  whom  the  serious 
men  of  tlie  future  will,  as  a  class,  believe. 

306 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

within  themselves  and  without,  as  the  sufficient 
revelation  of  God  to  their  souls,  and  they  will  set 
themselves  simply  to  that  revelation,  seeking  its 
meaning  towards  themselves  faithf ullj'-  and  cour- 
ageously. Manifestly  the  essential  being  of  man 
in  this  life  is  his  will ;  he  exists  consciously  only  to 
do;  his  main  interest  in  life  is  the  choice  between 
alternatives;  and,  since  he  moves  through  space 
and  time  to  effects  and  consequences,  a  general 
purpose  in  space  and  time  is  the  limit  of  his  under- 
standing. He  can  know  God  only  under  the 
semblance  of  a  pervading  purpose,  of  which  his 
own  individual  freedom  of  will  is  a  part,  but  he 
can  understand  that  the  purpose  that  exists  in 
space  and  time  is  no  more  God  than  a  voice  calling 
out  of  impenetrable  darkness  is  a  man.  To  men 
of  the  kinetic  type  belief  in  God  so  manifest  as 
purpose  is  irresistible,  and,  to  all  lucid  minds, 
the  being  of  God,  save  as  that  general  atmosphere 
of  imperfectly  apprehended  purpose  in  which 
our  individual  wills  operate,  is  incomprehensible. 
To  cling  to  any  belief  more  detailed  than  this,  to 
define  and  limit  God  in  order  to  take  hold  of  Him, 
to  detach  one's  self  and  parts  of  the  universe  from 
God  in  some  mysterious  way  in  order  to  reduce 
life  to  a  dramatic  antagonism,  is  not  faith,  but 
infirmity.  Excessive  strenuous  belief  is  not  faith. 
By  faith  we  disbelieve,  and  it  is  the  drowning 
man.  and  not  the  strong  swimmer,  who  clutches 
at  the  floating  straw.     It  is  in  the  nature  of  man, 

307 


ANTICIPATIONS 

it  is  in  the  prcvsent  purpose  of  things,  that  the 
real  world  of  our  experience  and  will  should  appear 
to  us  not  only  as  a  progressive  existence  in  space 
and  time,  but  as  a  scheme  of  good  and  evil.  But 
choice,  the  antagonism  of  good  and  evil,  just  as 
much  as  the  formulation  of  things  in  space  and 
time,  is  merely  a  limiting  condition  of  human 
being,  and  in  the  thought  of  God  as  we  conceive 
of  Him  in  the  light  of  faith,  this  antagonism 
vanishes.  God  is  no  moralist ;  God  is  no  partisan ; 
He  comprehends  and  cannot  be  comprehended, 
and  our  business  is  only  with  so  much  of  His  pur- 
pOvSe  as  centres  on  our  individual  wills. 

So,  or  in  some  such  phrases,  I  believe,  these  men 
of  the  new  republic  will  formulate  their  relation- 
ship to  God.  They  will  live  to  serve  this  purpose 
that  presents  Him,  without  presumption  and 
without  fear.  For  the  same  spacious  faith  that 
will  render  the  idea  of  airing  their  egotisms  in 
God's  presence  through  prayer,  or  of  any  such 
quite  personal  intimacy,  absurd,  will  render  the 
idea  of  an  irascible  and  punitive  Deity  ridiculous 
and  incredible. 

The  men  of  the  new  republic  will  hold  and 
understand  quite  clearly  the  doctrine  that  in  the 
real  world  of  man's  experience  there  is  free  will. 
The}'^  will  understand  that  constantly,  as  a  very 
condition  of  his  existence,  man  is  exercising  choice 
between  alternatives,  and  that  a  conflict  between 
motives   that   liave   different   moral   values   con- 

308 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

stantly  arises.  That  conflict  between  predes- 
tination and  free  will,  which  is  so  puzzling  to 
untrained  minds,  will  not  exist  for  them.  They 
will  know  that  in  the  real  world  of  sensory  ex- 
perience will  is  free,  just  as  new -sprung  grass 
is  green,  wood  hard,  ice  cold,  and  toothache  pain- 
ful. In  the  abstract  world  of  reasoning  science 
there  is  no  green,  no  color  at  all,  but  certain  lengths 
of  vibration;  no  hardness,  but  a  certain  reaction 
of  molecules;  no  cold  and  no  pain,  but  certain 
molecular  consequences  in  the  nerves  that  reach 
the  misinterpreting  mind.  In  the  abstract  world 
of  reasoning  science,  moreover,  there  is  a  rigid 
and  inevitable  sequence  of  cause  and  effect;  every 
act  of  man  could  be  foretold  to  its  uttermost  detail, 
if  only  we  knew  him  and  all  his  circumstances 
fully.  In  the  abstract  world  of  reasoned  science  all 
things  exist  now  potentially  down  to  the  last  mo- 
ment of  infinite  time.  But  the  human  will  does 
not  exist  in  the  abstract  world  of  reasoned  science, 
in  the  world  of  atoms  and  vibrations,  that  rigidly 
predestinate  .scheme  of  things  in  space  and  time. 
The  human  will  exists  in  this  world  of  men  and 
women,  in  this  world  where  the  grass  is  green  and 
desire  beckons,  and  the  choice  is  often  so  wide 
and  clear  between  the  sense  of  what  is  desirable 
and  what  is  more  widely  and  remotely  right.  In 
this  world  of  sense  and  the  daily  life  these  men 
will  believe,  with  an  absolute  conviction,  that 
there  is  free  will  and  a  personal  moral  responsi- 

309 


ANTICIPATIONS 

bility  in  relation  to  that  indistinctly  seen  pur- 
pose which  is  the  sufficient  revelation  of  God  to 
them. 

The  conception  they  will  have  of  that  purpose 
will  necessarily  determine  their  ethical  scheme. 
It  follows  manifestly  that  if  we  do  really  believe  in 
Almighty  God,  the  more  strenuously  and  success- 
fully we  seek  in  ourselves  and  His  world  to  under- 
stand the  order  and  progress  of  things,  and  the 
more  clearly  we  apprehend  His  purpose,  the  more 
assured  and  systematic  will  our  ethical  basis 
become. 

If,  like  Huxley,  we  do  not  positively  believe  in 
God,  then  we  may  still  cling  to  an  ethical  system 
which  has  become  an  organic  part  of  our  lives  and 
habits,  and  finding  it  manifestly  in  conflict  with  the 
purpose  in  things,  speak  of  the  non-ethical  order  of 
the  universe.  But  to  any  one  whose  mind  is  per- 
vaded by  faith  in  God,  a  non-ethical  universe  in 
conflict  with  the  incomprehensibly  ethical  soul  of 
the  agnostic  is  as  incredible  as  a  black-horned  devil, 
as  an  active  material  anti-god  with  hoofs,  tail, 
pitchfork,  and  Dunstan  -  scorched  nose  complete. 
To  believe  completely  in  God  is  to  believe  in  the 
final  rightness  of  all  being.  The  ethical  system 
that  condemns  the  ways  of  life  as  wrong,  or  points 
to  the  ways  of  death  as  right,  that  countenances 
what  the  scheme  of  things  condemns,  and  con- 
demns the  general  purpose  in  things  as  it  is  now 
revealed  to  us,  must  prepare  to  follow  the  theological 

310 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

edifice  upon  which  it  was  originally  based.  If  the 
universe  is  non-ethical  by  our  present  standards, 
we  must  reconsider  these  standards  and  recon- 
struct our  ethics.  To  hesitate  to  do  so,  however 
severe  the  conflict  with  old  habits  and  tradi- 
tions and  sentiments  may  be,  is  to  fall  short  of 
faith. 

Now,  so  far  as  the  intellectual  life  of  the  world 
goes,  this  present  time  is  essentially  the  opening 
phase  of  a  period  of  ethical  reconstruction,  a  re- 
construction of  which  the  new  republic  will  pos- 
sess the  matured  result.  Throughout  the  nine- 
teenth century  there  has  been  such  a  shattering 
euid  recasting  of  fundamental  ideas,  of  the  pre- 
liminaries to  ethical  propositions,  as  the  world 
has  never  seai  before.  This  breaking  down 
and  routing  out  of  almost  all  the  cardinal  assump- 
tions on  which  the  minds  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury dwelt  securely,  is  a  process  akin  to,  but  inde- 
pendent of,  the  development  of  mechanism,  whose 
consequences  we  have  traced.  It  is  a  part  of  that 
process  of  vigorous  and  fearless  criticism  which 
is  the  reality  of  science,  and  of  which  the  develop- 
ment of  mechanism  and  all  that  revolution  in 
physical  and  social  conditions  we  have  been  trac- 
ing, is  me-ely  the  vast  imposing  material  by- 
product. At  present,  indeed,  its  more  obvious  as- 
pect on  the  moral  and  ethical  side  is  destruction; 
anj'^  one  can  see  the  chips  flying,  but  it  still  de- 
mands a  certain  faith   and    patience  to  see  the 

311 


ANTICIPATIONS 

form  that  ensues.  But  it  is  not  destruction,  any 
more  than  a  sculptor's  work  is  stone-breaking. 

The  first  chapter  in  the  history  of  this  intellectual 
development,  its  definite  and  formal  opening,  coin- 
cides with  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century 
and  the  publication  of  Malthus's  Essay  on  Pop- 
ulation. Malthus  is  one  of  those  cardinal  figures 
in  intellectual  history  who  state  definitely  for  all 
time  things  apparent  enough  after  their  formula- 
tion, but  never  effectively  conceded  before.  He 
brought  clearly  and  empliatically  into  the  sphere 
of  discussion  a  vitally  important  issue  that  had 
always  been  shirked  and  tabooed  heretofore,  the 
fundamental  fact  that  the  main  mass  of  the  busi- 
ness of  human  life  centras  about  reproduction. 
He  stated  in  clear,  hard,  decent,  and  unavoidable 
argument  what  presently  Schopenhauer  was  to 
discover  and  proclaim,  in  language,  at  times,  it 
would  seem,  quite  unfitted  for  translation  into 
English.  And,  having  made  his  statement,  Mal- 
thus left  it,  in  contact  with  its  immediate  results. 

Probably  no  more  shattering  book  than  the 
Essay  on  Population  has  ever  been,  or  ever  will  be, 
written.  It  was  aimed  at  the  facile  liberalism 
of  the  deists  and  atheists  of  the  eighteenth  century; 
it  made  as  clear  as  daylight  that  all  forms  of  social 
reconstruction,  all  dreams  of  earthly  golden  ages, 
must  be  either  futile  or  insincere,  or  both,  until  the 
problems  of  human  increase  were  manfully  faced. 
It  proffered  no  suggestions  for  facing  them  (in 

312 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

spite  of  the  unpleasant  associations  of  Malthus's 
name) ;  it  aimed  simply  to  wither  the  rationalistic 
Utopias  of  the  time,  and,  by  anticipation,  all  the 
communisms,  socialisms,  and  earthly  paradise 
movements  that  have  since  been  so  abundantly 
audible  in  the  world.  That  was  its  aim  and  its 
immediate  effect.  Incidentally  it  must  have  been 
a  torturing  soul-trap  for  innumerable  idealistic 
but  intelligent  souls.  Its  indirect  effects  have 
been  altogether  greater.  Aiming  at  unorthodox 
dreamers,  it  has  set  such  forces  in  motion  as  have 
destroyed  the  very  root-ideas  of  orthodox  righteous- 
ness in  the  western  world.  Impinging  on  geolog- 
ical discovery,  it  awakened  almost  simultaneously 
in  the  minds  of  Darwin  and  Wallace  that  train  of 
thought  that  found  expression  and  demonstration 
at  last  in  the  theory  of  natural  selection.  As  that 
theory  has  been  more  and  more  thorougldy  as- 
similated and  understood  by  the  general  mind, 
it  has  destroyed,  quietlj^  but  entirely,  the  belief 
in  human  equality  which  is  implicit  in  all  the 
"liberalizing"  movements  of  the  world.  In  the 
place  of  an  essential  equality,  distorted  only  by 
tradition  and  early  training,  by  the  artifices  of 
those  devils  of  the  liberal  cosmogony,  "  kingcraft " 
and  "priestcraft,"  an  equality  as  little  affected 
by  color  as  the  equality  of  a  black  chess -pawn 
and  a  white,  we  discover  that  all  men  are  individual 
and  unique,  and,  through  long  ranges  of  com- 
parison,   superior    and    inferior    upon    countless 

313 


ANTICIPATIONS 

scores.  It  has  become  apparent  that  whole  masses 
of  human  population  are,  as  a  whole,  inferior  in 
their  claim  upon  the  future,  to  other  masses,  that 
they  cannot  be  given  opportunities  or  trusted  with 
power  as  the  superior  peoples  are  trusted,  that 
their  characteristic  weaknesses  are  contagious  and 
detrimental  in  the  civilizing  fabric,  and  that  their 
range  of  incapacity  tempts  and  demoralizes  the 
strong.  To  give  them  equality  is  to  sink  to  their 
level,  to  protect  and  cherish  them  is  to  be  swamped 
in  their  fecundity.  The  confident  and  optimistic 
radicalism  of  the  earlier  nineteenth  century,  and 
the  humanitarian  philanthropic  type  of  liberalism, 
have  bogged  themselves  beyond  hope  in  these 
realizations.  The  socialist  has  shirked  them  as 
he  has  shirked  the  older  crux  of  Malthus.  Liber- 
alism is  a  thing  of  the  past,  with  nothing .  left 
but  leaders.  There  must  follow  some  new -bom 
thing. 

And  as  effectually  has  the  mass  of  criticism  that 
centres  about  Darwin  destroyed  the  dogma  of  the 
Fall,  upon  which  the  whole  intellectual  fabric  of 
Christianity  rests.  For  without  a  Fall  there  is  no 
redemption,  and  the  whole  theory  and  meaning 
of  the  Pauline  system  is  vain.  In  conjunction 
with  the  wide  vistas  opened  by  geological  and 
astronomical  discovery,  the  nineteenth  century 
has,  indeed,  lost  the  very  habit  of  thought  from 
which  the  belief  in  a  Fall  arose.  It  is  as  if  a  hand 
had  been  put  upon  the  head  of  the  thoughtful 

314 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

man  and  had  turned  his  eyes  about  from  the  past 
to  the  future.  In  matters  of  inteUigence,  at  least, 
if  not  yet  in  matters  of  ethics  and  conduct,  this 
turning  round  has  occurred.  In  the  past,  thought 
was  legal  in  its  spirit;  it  deduced  the  present  from 
pre-existing  prescription;  it  derived  everything 
from  the  offences  and  promises  of  the  dead;  the 
idea  of  a  universe  of  expiation  was  the  most 
natural  theory  amid  such  processes.  The  pur- 
pose the  older  theologians  saw  in  the  world  was 
no  more  than  the  revenge — accentuated  by  the 
special  treatment  of  a  favored  minority — of  a 
mysteriously  incompetent  Deity  exasperated  by 
an  unsatisfactory  creation.  But  modern  thought 
is  altogether  too  constructive  and  creative  to 
tolerate  such  a  conception,  and  in  the  vaster  past 
that  has  opened  to  us  it  can  find  neither  offence 
nor  promise,  only  a  spacious  scheme  of  events, 
opening  out — perpetually  opening  out — with  a 
quality  of  final  purpose  as  irresistible  to  most 
men's  minds  as  it  is  incomprehensible,  opening 
out  with  all  that  inexplicable  quality  of  design 
that,  for  example,  some  great  piece  of  music,  some 
symphony  of  Beethoven's,  conveys.  We  see  future 
beyond  future  and  past  behind  past.  It  has  been 
like  the  coming  of  dawn,  at  first  a  colorless  dawn, 
clear  and  spacious,  before  which  the  mists  whirl 
and  fade,  and  there  opens  to  our  eyes  not  the  nar- 
row passage,  the  definite  end  we  had  imagined, 
but  the  rocky,  ill-defined  path  we  follow  high  amid 

315 


ANTICIPATIONS 

this  limitless  prospect  of  space  and  time.  At  first 
the  dawn  is  cold — there  is,  at  times,  a  quality  of 
terror  almost  in  the  cold  clearness  of  the  morning 
twilight — but  insensibly  its  coldness  passes,  the 
sky  is  touched  with  fire,  and  presently,  up  out 
of  the  day-spring  in  the  east,  the  sunlight  will  be 
pouring.  ...  And  these  men  of  the  new  repub- 
lic will  be  going  about  in  the  dajdight  of  things 
assured. 

And  men's  concern  under  this  ampler  view  will 
no  longer  be  to  work  out  a  system  of  penalties, 
but  to  understand  and  participate  in  this  great 
development  that  now  dawns  on  the  human  un- 
derstanding. The  insoluble  problems  of  pain  and 
death,  gaunt,  incomprehensible  facts  as  they  were, 
fall  into  place  in  the  gigantic  order  that  evo- 
lution unfolds.  All  things  are  integral  in  the 
mighty  scheme;  the  slain  builds  up  the  slayer, 
the  wolf  grooms  the  horse  into  swiftness,  and 
the  tiger  calls  for  wisdom  and  courage  out  of 
man.  All  things  are  integral,  but  it  has  been 
left  for  men  to  be  consciously  integral,  to  take, 
at  last,  a  share  in  the  process,  to  have  wills 
that  have  caught  a  harmony  with  the  universal 
will,  as  sand-grains  flash  into  splendor  under  the 
blaze  of  the  sun.  There  will  be  many  who  will 
never  be  called  to  this  religious  conviction,  who 
will  lead  their  little  lives  like  fools,  playing  fool- 
ishly with  religion  and  all  the  great  issues  of  life, 
or  like  the  beasts  that  perish,  having  sense  alone; 

316 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

but  those  who,  by  character  and  intelhgence,  are 
predestinate  to  participate  in  the  reahty  of  life, 
will  fearlessly  shape  all  their  ethical  determinations 
and  public  policy  anew,  from  a  fearless  study  of 
themselves  and  the  apparent  purpose  that  opens 
out  before  them. 

Very  much  of  the  cry  for  faith  that  sounds  in 
contemporary  life  so  loudly,  and  often  with  so 
distressing  a  note  of  sincerity,  comes  from  the 
unsatisfied  egotisms  of  unemployed,  and  therefore 
unhappy,  and  craving  people;  but  much  is  also 
due  to  the  distress  in  the  minds  of  active  and  serious 
men,  due  to  the  conflict  of  inductive  knowledge, 
with  conceptions  of  right  and  wrong  deduced 
from  unsound  but  uncriticised  first  principles. 
The  old  ethical  principles,  the  principle  of  equiv- 
alents or  justice,  the  principle  of  self  -  sacrifice, 
the  various  vague  and  arbitrary  ideas  of  purity, 
chastity,  and  sexual  "sin,"  came  like  rays  out  of 
the  theological  and  philosophical  lanterns  men 
carried  in  the  darkness.  The  ray  of  the  lantern 
indicated  and  directed,  and  one  followed  it  as  one 
follows  a  path.  But  now  there  has  come  a  new 
view  of  man's  place  in  the  scheme  of  time  and 
space,  a  new  illumination — dawn;  the  lantern 
raj'^s  fade  in  the  growing  brightness,  and  the  lan- 
terns that  shone  so  brightly  are  becoming  smoky 
and  dim.  To  many  men  this  is  no  more  than  a 
waning  of  the  lanterns,  and  they  call  for  new 
ones,  or  a  trimming  of  the  old.     They  blame  the 

317 


ANTICIPATIONS 

day  for  putting  out  these  flares.  And  some  go 
apart,  out  of  the  glare  of  hfe,  into  corners  of  ob- 
scurity, where  the  radiation  of  the  lantern  may 
still  be  faintly  traced.  But,  indeed,  with  the  new 
light  there  has  come  the  time  for  new  methods ; 
the  time  of  lanterns,  the  time  of  deductions  from 
arbitrary  first  principles  is  over.  The  act  of  faith 
is  no  longer  to  follow  your  lantern,  but  to  put  it 
down.  We  can  see  about  us,  and  by  the  landscape 
we  must  go.* 

*  It  is  an  interesting  by-way  from  our  main  thesis  to  specidate 
on  the  spiritual  pathology  of  the  functionless  wealthy,  the  half- 
educated,  independent  women  of  the  middle  class,  and  the  people 
of  the  abyss.  While  the  segregating  new  middle  class,  whose 
religious  and  moral  development  forms  our  main  interest,  is 
developing  its  spacious  and  confident  theism,  there  will,  I  im- 
agine, be  a  steady  decay  in  the  various  Protestant  congrega- 
tions. They  have  played  a  noble  part  in  the  history  of  the  world ; 
their  spirit  will  live  forever,  but  their  formulae  and  organization 
wax  old  like  a  garment.  Their  moral  austerity — that  touch 
of  contempt  for  the  unsubstantial  aesthetic  which  has  always 
distinguished  Protestantism — is  naturally  repellent  to  the  ir- 
responsible rich  and  to  artistic  people  of  the  weaker  type,  and 
the  face  of  Protestantism  has  ever  been  firm  even  to  hardness 
against  the  self-indulgent,  the  idler,  and  the  prolific,  useless 
poor.  The  rich  as  a  class  and  the  people  of  the  abyss,  so  far 
as  they  move  towards  any  existing  religious  body,  will  be  at- 
tracted by  the  moral  kindliness,  the  picturesque  organization, 
and  venerable  tradition  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  We  are 
only  in  the  very  beginning  of  a  great  Roman  Catholic  revival. 
The  diversified  country-side  of  the  coming  time  will  show  many 
a  splendid  cathedral,  many  an  elaborate  monastic  palace,  tower- 
ing amid  the  abounding  colleges  and  technical  schools.  Along 
the  moving  platforms  of  the  urban  centre,  and  athwart  the 
shining  advertisements  that  will  adorn  them,  will  go  the  cere- 
monial procession,  all  glorious  with  banners  and  censer-bearers, 
and  the  meek,  blue-shaven  priests  and  barefooted,  rope-girdled, 
holy  men.     And  the  artful  poUtician  of  the  coming  days,  until 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

How  will  the  landscape  shape  itself  to  the  domi- 
nant men  of  the  new  time  and  in  relation  to  them- 
selves? What  is  the  will  and  purpose  that  these 
men  of  will  and  purpose  will  find  above  and  com- 
prehending their  own?  Into  this  our  inquiry 
resolves  itself.  They  will  hold  with  Schopen- 
hauer, I  believe,  and  with  those  who  build  them- 
selves on  Malthus  and  Darwin,  that  the  scheme 


the  broom  of  the  new  republic  sweep  him  up,  will  arrange  the 
miraculous  planks  of  his  "party  "  always  with  an  eye  upon  the 
priest.  Within  the  ample  sheltering  arms  of  the  Mother  Church 
many  eccentric  cults  will  develop.  The  curious  may  study 
the  works  of  M.  Huysmans  to  learn  of  the  mystical  propitiation 
of  God,  Who  made  heaven  and  earth,  by  the  bed-sores  of  hysterical 
girls.  The  future,  as  I  see  it,  swarms  with  Durtals  and  Sister 
Teresas ;  countless  ecstatic  nuns,  holding  their  Maker  as  it  were 
in  deliciae,  will  shelter  from  the  world  in  simple  but  costly  re- 
fuges of  refined  austerity.  Where  miracles  are  needed,  miracles 
will  occur. 

Except  for  a  few  queer  people,  nourished  on  Maria  Monk 
and  such-like  anti-papal  pornography,  I  doubt  if  there  will  be 
any  Protestants  left  among  the  irresponsible  rich.  Those  who 
do  not  follow  the  main  current  will  probably  take  up  with  weird 
science-denouncing  sects  of  the  faith-healing  type,  or  with  such 
pseudo-scientific  gibberish  as  theosophy.  Shintoism  and  either 
a  cleaned  or,  more  probably,  a  scented  Obi,  might  in  vigor- 
ous hands  be  pushed  to  a  very  considerable  success  in  the  com- 
ing years ;  and  I  do  not  see  any  absolute  impossibility  in  the 
idea  of  an  after  -  dinner  witch  -  smelling  in  Park  Lane  with  a 
witch-doctor  dressed  in  feathers.  It  might  be  made  amazing- 
ly picturesque.  People  would  attend  it  with  an  air  of  intel- 
lectual liberality,  not,  of  course,  believing  in  it  absolutely, 
but  admitting  "  there  must  be  something  in  it."  That — some- 
thing in  it  I  The  fool  hath  said  in  his  heart  there  is  no  God,  and 
after  that  he  is  ready  to  do  anything  with  his  mind  and  soul. 
It  is  by  faith  we  disbelieve. 

And,  of  course,  there  will  be  much  outspoken  atheism  and 
anti  -  religion   of   the   type  of   the   Parisian   devil-worship  im- 


ANTICIPATIONS 

of  being  in  which  we  Hve  is  a  struggle  of  existences 
to  expand  and  develop  themselves  to  their  full 
completeness,  and  to  propagate  and  increase  them- 
selves. But,  being  men  of  action,  they  will  feel 
nothing  of  the  glamour  of  misery  that  irresponsible 
and  sexually  vitiated  share-holder,  Schopenhauer, 
threw  over  this  recognition.  The  final  object  of 
this  struggle  among  existences  they  will  not  under- 
stand; they  will  have  abandoned  the  search  for  ulti- 
mates;  they  will  state  this  scheme  of  a  struggle 
as  a  proximate  object,  sufficiently  remote  and 
spacious  to  enclose  and  explain  all  their  possible 
activities.  They  will  seek  God's  purpose  in  the 
sphere  of  their  activities,  and  desire  no  more,  as 
the  soldier  in  battle  desires  no  more  than  the  im- 
mediate conflict  before  him.  They  will  admit 
failure  as  an  individual  aspect  of  things,  as  a 

becilities.  Young  men  of  means  will  determine  to  be  "wicked." 
They  will  do  silly  things  that  will  strike  them  as  being  indecent 
and  blasphemous  and  dreadful  —  black  masses  and  such-like 
nonsense — and  then  they  will  get  scared.  The  sort  of  thing  it 
will  be  to  shock  orthodox  maiden  aunts  and  make  Olympus 
ring  with  laughter.  A  taking  sort  of  nonsense  already  loose 
I  find  among  very  young  men  is  to  say,  "  Understand — I  am 
non-moral."  Two  thoroughly  respectable  young  gentlemen 
coming  from  quite  different  circles  have  recently  introduced 
their  souls  to  me  in  this  same  formula.  Botli,  I  rejoice  to  re- 
mark, are  married,  both  are  steady  and  industrious  young 
men,  trustworthy  in  word  and  contract,  dressed  in  accordance 
with  current  conceptions,  and  behaving  with  perfect  decorum. 
One,  no  doubt  for  sinister  ends,  aspires  to  better  the  world  through 
a  socialistic  propaganda.  But  in  a  tight  corner  some  day  that 
silly  little  formula  may  just  suffice  to  trip  up  one  or  other  of  these 
men.  To  many  of  the  irresponsible  rich,  however,  that  little 
"  Understand — I  am  non-moral  "  may  prove  of  priceless  worth. 

320 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

soldier  seeking  victory  admits  the  possibility  of 
death;  but  they  will  refuse  to  admit  as  a  part  of 
their  faith  in  God  that  any  existence,  even  if  it 
is  an  existence  that  is  presently  entirely  erased, 
can  ])e  needless  or  vain.  It  will  have  reacted  on 
the  existences  that  survive;  it  will  be  justified  for- 
ever in  the  modification  it  has  produced  in  them. 
They  will  find  in  themselves — it  must  be  remem- 
bered I  am  speaking  of  a  class  that  has  naturally 
segregated,  and  not  of  men  as  a  whole — a  desire, 
a  passion  almost,  to  create  and  organize,  to  put 
in  order,  to  get  the  maximum  result  from  certain 
possibilities.  They  will  all  be  artists  in  reality, 
with  a  passion  for  simplicity  and  directness  and  an 
impatience  of  confusion  and  inefficiency.  The  de- 
termining frame  of  their  ethics,  the  more  spacious 
scheme  to  which  they  will  shape  the  schemes  of 
their  individual  wills,  will  be  the  elaboration  of  that 
future  world  state  to  which  all  things  are  point- 
ing. They  will  not  conceive  of  it  as  a  millennial 
paradise,  a  blissful,  inconsequent  stagnation,  but 
as  a  world  state  of  active,  ampler  human  beings, 
full  of  knowledge  and  energy,  free  from  much  of 
the  baseness  and  limitations,  the  needless  pains 
and  dishonors  of  the  world-disorder  of  to-day,  but 
still  struggling,  struggling  against  ampler  but  still 
too  narrow  restrictions  and  for  still  more  spacious 
objects  than  our  vistas  have  revealed.  For  that 
as  a  general  end.  for  the  special  work  that 
contributes  to  it  as  an  individual  end,  they  will 

321 

2J> 


ANTICIPATIONS 

make  the  plans  and  the  Umiting  rules  of  their 
lives. 

It  is  manifest  that  a  reconstructed  ethical  system, 
reconstructed  in  the  light  of  modern  science  and 
to  meet  the  needs  of  such  temperaments  and  charac- 
ters as  the  evolution  of  mechanism  will  draw  to- 
gether and  develop,  will  give  very  different  values 
from  those  given  by  the  existing  systems  (if  they 
can  be  called  systems)  to  almost  all  the  great  mat- 
ters of  conduct.  Under  scientific  analysis  the 
essential  facts  of  life  are  very  clearly  shown  to  be 
two — birth  and  death.  All  life  is  the  effort  of  the 
thing  born,  driven  by  fears,  guided  by  instincts 
and  desires,  to  evade  death,  to  evade  even  the 
partial  death  of  crippling  or  cramping  or  restriction, 
and  to  attain  to  effective  procreation,  to  the  victory 
of  another  birth.  Procreation  is  the  triumph  of 
the  living  being  over  death;  and  in  the  case  of  man, 
who  adds  mind  to  his  body,  it  is  not  only  in  his 
child  but  in  the  dissemination  of  his  thought,  the 
expression  of  his  mind  in  things  done  and  made, 
that  his  triumph  is  to  be  found.  And  the  ethical 
system  of  these  men  of  the  new  republic,  the 
ethical  system  which  will  dominate  the  world  state, 
will  be  shaped  primarily  to  favor  the  procreation 
of  what  is  fine  and  efficient  and  beautiful  in  human- 
ity— beautiful  and  strong  bodies,  clear  and  power- 
ful minds,  and  a  growing  body  of  knowledge — 
and  to  check  the  procreation  of  base  and  servile 
types,  of  fear -driven  and  cowardly  souls,  of  all 

322 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

that  is  mean  and  ugly  and  bestial  in  the  souls, 
bodies,  or  habits  of  men.  To  do  the  latter  is  to 
do  the  former;  the  two  things  are  inseparable. 
And  the  method  that  nature  has  followed  hitherto 
in  the  shaping  of  the  world,  whereby  weakness 
was  prevented  from  propagating  weakness,  and 
cowardice  and  feebleness  were  saved  from  the 
accomplishment  of  their  desires,  the  method  that 
has  only  one  alternative,  the  method  that  must 
in  some  cases  still  be  called  in  to  the  help  of  man, 
is  death.  In  the  new  vision  death  is  no  inex- 
plicable horror,  no  pointless  terminal  terror  to  the 
miseries  of  life,  it  is  the  end  of  all  the  pain  of 
life,  the  end  of  the  bitterness  of  failure,  the  merci- 
ful obliteration  of  weak  and  silly  and  pointless 
things. 

The  new  ethics  will  hold  life  to  be  a  privilege 
and  a  responsibility,  not  a  sort  of  night  refuge  for 
base  spirits  out  of  the  void;  and  the  alternative  in 
right  conduct  between  living  fully  beautifully,  and 
efficiently  will  be  to  die.  For  a  multitude  of  con- 
temptible and  silly  creatures,  fear-driven  and  help- 
less and  useless,  unhappy  or  hatefully  happy  in 
the  midst  of  squalid  dishonor,  feeble,  ugly,  in- 
efficient, born  of  unrestrained  lusts,  and  increasing 
and  multiplying  through  sheer  incontinence  and 
stupidity,  the  men  of  the  new  republic  will  have 
little  pity  and  less  benevolence.  To  make  life 
convenient  for  the  breeding  of  such  people  will 
seem  to  them  not  the  most  virtuous  and  amiable 

323 


ANTICIPATIONS 

thing  in  the  world,  as  it  is  held  to  be  now,  but  an 
exceedingly  abominable  proceeding.  Procreation 
is  an  avoidable  thing  for  sane  persons  of  even  the 
most  furious  passions,  and  the  men  of  the  new 
republic  will  hold  that  the  procreation  of  children 
wjio,  by  the  circumstances  of  their  parentage, 
must  be  diseased  bodily  or  mentally — I  do  not 
think  it  will  be  difficult  for  the  medical  science  of 
the  coming  time  to  define  such  circumstances — 
is  absolutely  the  most  loathsome  of  all  conceivable 
sins.  They  will  hold,  I  anticipate,  that  a  certain 
portion  of  the  population — the  small  minority, 
for  example,  afflicted  with  indisputably  trans- 
missible diseases,  with  transmissible  mental  dis- 
orders, with  such  hideous  incurable  habits  of 
mind  as  the  craving  for  intoxication — exists  only 
on  sufferance,  out  of  pity  and  patience,  and  on  the 
understanding  that  they  do  not  propagate;  and  I  do 
not  foresee  any  reason  to  suppose  that  they  will 
hesitate  to  kill  when  that  sufferance  is  abused. 
And  I  imagine  also  the  plea  and  proof  that  a 
grave  criminal  is  also  insane  will  be  regarded 
by  them  not  as  a  reason  for  mercy,  but  as  an 
added  reason  for  death.  I  do  not  see  how  they 
can  think  otherwise  on  the  principles  they  will 
profess. 

The  men  of  the  new  republic  will  not  be 
squeamish  either  in  fax:ing  or  inflicting  death, 
because  they  will  have  a  fuller  sense  of  the  pos- 
sibilities of  life  than  we  possess.     They  will  have 

324 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

an  ideal  that  will  make  killing  worth  the  while; 
like  Abraham,  they  will  have  the  faith  to  kill, 
and  they  will  have  no  superstitions  about  death. 
They  will  naturally  regard  the  modest  suicide 
of  incurably  melancholy  or  diseased  or  helpless 
persons  as  a  high  and  courageous  act  of  duty  rather 
than  a  crime.  And  since  they  will  regard,  as  in- 
deed all  men  raised  above  a  brutish  level  do  regard, 
a  very  long  term  of  imprisonment  as  infinitely 
worse  than  death,  as  being,  indeed,  death  with  a 
living  misery  added  to  its  natural  terror,  they  will, 
I  conceive,  where  the  whole  tenor  of  a  man's  actions, 
and  not  simply  some  incidental  or  impulsive  ac- 
tion, seems  to  prove  him  unfitted  for  free  life  in  the 
world,  consider  him  carefully,  and  condemn  him, 
and  remove  him  from  being.  All  such  killing  will 
be  done  with  an  opiate,  for  death  is  too  grave  a 
thing  to  be  made  painful  or  dreadful,  and  used 
as  a  deterrent  from  crime.  If  deterrent  punish- 
ments are  used  at  all  in  the  code  of  the  future,  the 
deterrent  will  neither  be  death,  nor  mutilation  of 
the  body,  nor  mutilation  of  the  life  by  imprison- 
ment, nor  any  horrible  things  like  that,  but  good, 
scientifically  caused  pain,  that  will  leave  nothing 
but  a  memory.  Yet  even  the  memory  of  over- 
whelming pain  is  a  sort  of  mutilation  of  the  soul. 
The  idea  that  only  those  who  are  fit  to  live  freely 
in  an  orderly  world  state  should  be  permitted 
to  live,  is  entirely  against  the  use  of  deterrent 
punishments  at  all.     Against  outrageous  conduct 

325 


ANTICIPATIONS 

to  children  or  women,  perhaps,  or  for  very  cowardly 
or  brutal  assaults  of  any  sort,  the  men  of  the  future 
may  consider  pain  a  salutarj^  remedy,  at  least 
during  the  ages  of  transition  while  the  brute  is 
still  at  large.  But  since  most  acts  of  this  sort  do, 
imder  conditions  that  neither  torture  nor  exas- 
perate, point  to  an  essential  vileness  in  the  perpe- 
trator, I  am  inclined  to  think  that  even  in  these 
cases  the  men  of  the  coming  time  will  be  far  less 
disposed  to  torture  than  to  kill.  They  will  have 
another  aspect  to  consider.  The  conscious  in- 
fliction of  pain,  for  the  sake  of  the  pain,  is  against 
the  better  nature  of  man,  and  it  is  unsafe  and 
demoralizing  for  any  one  to  undertake  this  duty. 
To  kill  under  the  seemly  conditions  science  will 
afford  is  a  far  less  offensive  thing.  The  rulers  of 
the  future  will  grudge  making  good  people  into 
jailers,  warders,  punishment-dealers,  nurses,  and 
attendants  on  the  bad.  People  who  cannot  live 
happily  and  freely  in  the  world  without  spoiling 
the  lives  of  others  are  better  out  of  it.  That  is 
a  current  sentiment  even  to-day,  but  the  men  of 
the  new  republic  will  liave  the  courage  of  their 
opinions. 

And  the  type  of  men  that  I  conceive  emerging  in 
the  coming  years  will  deal  simply  and  logically  not 
only  with  the  business  of  death,  but  with  birth.  At 
present  the  sexual  morality  of  the  civilized  world 
is  the  most  illogical  and  incoherent  system  of  wild 
permissions  and  insane  prohibitions,  foolish  toler- 

326 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

ance  and  ruthless  cruelty  that  it  is  possible  to 
imagine.  Our  current  civilization  is  a  sexual 
lunatic.  And  it  has  lost  its  reason  in  this  respect 
under  the  stresses  of  the  new  birth  of  things,  largely- 
through  the  difficulties  that  have  stood  in  the  way, 
and  do  still,  in  a  diminishing  degree,  stand  in  the 
way  of  any  sane  discussion  of  the  matter  as  a 
whole..  To  approach  it  is  to  approach  excitement. 
So  few  people  seem  to  be  leading  happy  and  healthy 
sexual  lives  that  to  mention  the  very  word  "  sexual " 
is  to  set  them  stirring,  to  brighten  the  eye,  lower 
the  voice,  and  blanch  or  flush  the  cheek  with  a 
flavor  of  guilt.  We  are  all,  as  it  were,  keeping 
our  secrets  and  hiding  our  shames.  One  of  the 
most  curious  revelations  of  this  fact  occurred  only 
a  few  years  ago,  when  the  artless  outpourings 
in  fiction  of  certain  young  women  who  had  failed 
to  find  light  on  problems  that  pressed  upon  them 
for  solution  (and  which  it  was  certainly  their  busi- 
ness as  possible  wives  and  mothers  to  solve)  roused 
all  sorts  of  respectable  people  to  a  quite  insane 
vehemence  of  condemnation.  Now,  there  are  ex- 
cellent reasons  and  a  permanent  necessity  for 
the  preservation  of  decency,  and  for  a  far  more 
stringent  suppression  of  matter  that  is  merely  in- 
tended to  excite  than  at  present  obtains,  and  the 
chief  of  these  reasons  lies  in  the  need  of  preserving 
the  young  from  a  premature  awakening,  and  in- 
deed, in  the  interests  of  civilization,  in  positively 
delaying  the  period  of  awakening,  retarding  ma- 

327 


ANTICIPATIONS 

turity  and  lengthening  the  period  of  growth  and 
preparation  as  much  as  possible.  But  purity 
and  innocence  may  be  prolonged  too  late;  in- 
nocence is  really  no  more  becoming  to  adults  than 
a  rattle  or  a  rubber  consoler,  and  the  bashfulness 
that  hampers  this  discussion,  that  permits  it  only 
in  a  furtive,  silly  sort  of  way,  has  its  ugly  conse- 
quences in  shames  and  cruelties,  in  miserable 
households  and  pitiful  crises,  in  the  production 
of  countless,  needless,  and  unhappy  lives.  In- 
deed, too  often  we  carry  our  decency  so  far  as 
to  make  it  suggestive  and  stimulating  in  a  non- 
natural  way;  we  invest  the  plain  business  of 
reproduction  with  a  m3'^stic,  religious  quality  far 
more  unwholesome  than  a  savage  nakedness  could 
possibly  be. 

The  essential  aspect  of  all  this  wild  and  windy 
business  of  the  sexual  relations  is,  after  all,  births. 
Upon  this  plain  fact  the  people  of  the  emergent  new 
republic  will  unhesitatingly  go.  The  pre-emi- 
nent value  of  sexual  questions  in  morality  lies  in 
the  fact  that  the  lives  which  will  constitute  the 
future  are  involved.  If  they  are  not  involved,  if 
we  can  dissociate  this  relationship  from  this  issue, 
then  sexual  questions  become  of  no  more  impor- 
tance than  the  morality  of  one's  deportment  at 
chess,  or  the  general  morality  of  out-door  games. 
Indeed,  then  the  question  of  sexual  relationships 
would  be  entirely  on  all  fours  with,  and  probably 
very  emalogous  to,  the  question  of  golf.     In  each 

328 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

case  it  would  be  for  the  medical  man  and  the 
psychologist  to  decide  how  far  the  thing  was  whole- 
some and  permissible,  and  how  far  it  was  an  ag- 
gressive bad  habit  and  an  absorbing  waste  of  time 
and  energy.  An  able-bodied  man  continually 
addicted  to  love-making  that  had  no  result  in 
offspring  would  be  just  as  silly  and  morally  ob- 
jectionable as  an  able-bodied  man  who  devoted  his 
chief  energies  to  hitting  little  balls  over  golf-links. 
But  no  more.  Both  would  probably  be  wasting  the 
lives  of  other  human  beings — the  golfer  must 
employ  his  caddie.  It  is  entirely  the  matter  of 
births,  and  a  further  consideration  to  be  presently 
discussed,  that  makes  this  analogy  untrue.  It 
does  not,  however,  make  it  so  untrue  as  to  do  away 
with  the  probability  that  in  many  cases  the  emer- 
gent men  of  the  new  time  will  consider  sterile  grat- 
ification a  moral  and  legitimate  thing.  St.  Paul 
tells  us  that  it  is  better  to  marry  than  to  bum,  but 
to  beget  children  on  that  account  will  appear,  I 
imagine,  to  these  coming  men  as  an  absolutely 
loathsome  proceeding.  They  will  stifle  no  spread 
of  knowledge  that  will  diminish  the  swarming 
misery  of  childhood  in  the  slums,  they  will  regard 
the  disinclination  of  the  witless  "  society "  woman 
to  become  a  mother  as  a  most  amiable  trait  in  her 
foUy.  In  our  bashfulness  about  these  things 
we  talk  an  abominable  lot  of  nonsense;  all  this 
uproar  one  hears  about  the  rapid  multiplication  of 
the  unfit  and  the  future  of  the  lower  races  takes  on 

329 


ANTICIPATIONS 

an  entirely  different  complexion  directly  we  face 
known,  if  indelicate,  facts.  Most  of  the  human 
types,  that  by  civilized  standards  are  undesirable, 
are  quite  willing  to  die  out  through  such  sup- 
pressions if  the  world  will  only  encourage  them  a 
little.  They  multiply  in  sheer  ignorance,  but 
they  do  not  desire  multiplication  even  now,  and 
they  can  easily  be  made  to  dread  it.  Sensuality 
aims  not  at  life,  but  at  itself.  I  believe  that  the 
men  of  the  new  republic  will  deliberately  shape 
their  public  policy  along  these  lines.  They  will 
rout  out  and  illuminate  urban  rookeries  and  all 
places  where  the  base  can  drift  to  multiply;  they 
will  contrive  a  land  legislation  that  will  keep  the 
black,  or  yellow,  or  mean-w^hite  squatter  on  the 
move;  they  will  see  to  it  that  no  parent  can  make 
a  profit  out  of  a  child,  so  that  child-bearing  shall 
cease  to  be  a  hopeful  speculation  for  the  unem- 
ployed poor;  and  they  will  make  the  maintenance 
of  a  child  the  first  charge  upon  the  parents  who 
have  brought  it  into  the  world.  Only  in  this  way 
can  progress  escape  being  clogged  by  the  prod- 
ucts of  the  security  it  creates.  The  development 
of  science  has  lifted  famine  and  pestilence  from 
the  shoulders  of  man,  and  it  will  yet  lift  war — 
for  some  other  end  than  to  give  him  a  spell  of  pro- 
miscuous and  finally  cruel  and  horrible  repro- 
duction. 

No  doubt  the  sentimentalist,  and  all  whose  moral 
sense  has  been  vigorously  trained  in  the  old  school, 

330 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

will  find  this  rather  a  dreadful  suggestion;  it 
amounts  to  saying  that  for  the  abyss  to  become 
a  "  hot-bed  "  of  sterile  immorality  will  fall  in  with 
the  deliberate  policy  of  the  ruling  class  in  the 
days  to  come.  At  any  rate,  it  will  be  a  terminat- 
ing evil.  At  present  the  abyss  is  a  hot-bed  breed- 
ing undesirable  and  too  often  fearfully  miserable 
children.  That  is  something  more  than  a  sen- 
timental horror.  Under  the  really  very  horrible 
morality  of  to-day,  the  spectacle  of  a  mean-spirited, 
under-sized,  diseased  little  man,  quite  incapable 
of  earning  a  decent  living  for  himself,  married 
to  some  under-fed,  ignorant,  ill-shaped,  plain,  and 
diseased  little  woman,  and  guilty  of  the  lives  of 
ten  or  twelve  ugly,  ailing  children,  is  regarded 
as  an  extremely  edifying  spectacle,  and  the  two 
parents  consider  their  reproductive  excesses  as 
giving  them  a  distinct  blaim  upon  less  fecund 
and  more  prosperous  people.  Benevolent  persons 
throw  themselves  with  peculiar  ardor  into  a  case 
of  this  sort,  and  quite  passionate  efforts  are  made  to 
strengthen  the  mother  against  further  eventualities 
and  protect  the  children  until  they  attain  to  nubile 
years.  Until  the  attention  of  the  benevolent  per- 
sons is  presently  distracted  by  a  new  case.  .  .  . 
Yet  so  powerful  is  the  suggestion  of  current  opin- 
ions that  few  people  seem  to  see  nowadays  just 
what  a  horrible  and  criminal  thing  this  sort  of 
family,  seen  from  the  point  of  view  of  social  phys- 
iology, appears. 

331 


ANTICIPATIONS 

And  directly  such  principles  as  these  come  into 
effective  operation,  and  I  believe  that  the  next 
hmidred  years  will  see  this  new  phase  of  the  human 
history  beginning,  there  will  recommence  a  process 
of  physical  and  mental  improvement  in  mankind,  a 
raising  and  elaboration  of  the  average  man,  that 
has  virtually  been  in  suspense  during  the  greater 
portion  of  the  historical  period.  It  is  possible 
that  in  the  last  hundred  years,  in  the  more  civilized 
states  of  the  world,  the  average  of  humanity  has 
positively  fallen.  All  our  philanthropists,  all  our 
religious  teachers,  seem  to  be  in  a  sort  of  informal 
conspiracy  to  preserve  an  atmosphere  of  mystical 
ignorance  about  these  matters,  which,  in  view  of 
the  irresistible  nature  of  the  sexual  impulse,  results 
in  a  swelling  tide  of  miserable  little  lives.  Consider 
what  it  will  mean  to  have  perhaps  half  the  popula- 
tion of  the  world,  in  every  generation,  restrained 
from  or  tempted  to  evade  reproduction!  This 
thing,  this  euthanasia  of  the  weak  and  sensual, 
is  possible.  On  the  principles  that  will  probably 
animate  the  predominant  classes  of  the  new  time, 
it  will  be  permissible,  and  I  have  little  or  no  doubt 
that  in  the  future  it  will  be  planned  and  achieved. 

If  birth  were  all  the  making  of  a  civilized  man, 
the  men  of  the  future,  on  the  general  principles 
we  have  imputed  to  them,  would  under  no  circum- 
stances find  the  birth  of  the  child,  healthy  in  body 
and  brain,  more  than  the  most  venial  of  offences. 
But  birth  gives  only  the  beginning,  the  raw  ma- 

ZZ2 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

terial,  of  a  civilized  man.  The  perfect  civilized 
man  is  not  only  a  sound,  strong  body,  but  a  very 
elaborate  fabric  of  mind.  He  is  a  fabric  of  moral 
suggestions  that  become  mental  habits,  a  maga- 
zine of  more  or  less  systematized  ideas,  a  scheme 
of  knowledge  and  training  and  an  aesthetic  cult- 
ure. He  is  the  child  not  onlj'^  of  parents  but  of  a 
home  and  of  an  education.  He  has  to  be  carefully 
guarded  from  physical  and  moral  contagions.  A 
reasonable  probability  of  insuring  home  and  edu- 
cation and  protection  without  any  parasitic  de- 
pendence on  people  outside  the  kin  of  the  child,  will 
be  a  necessary  condition  to  a  moral  birth  under 
such  general  principles  as  we  have  supposed.  Now, 
this  sweeps  out  of  reason  any  such  promiscuity  of 
healthy  people  as  the  late  Mr.  Grant  Allen  is  sup- 
posed to  have  advocated — but,  so  far  as  I  can 
understand  him,  did  not.  But  whether  it  works 
out  to  the  taking  over  of  the  permanent  monogamic 
marriage  of  the  old  morality,  as  a  going  concern, 
is  another  matter.  Upon  this  matter  I  must  con- 
fess my  views  of  the  trend  of  things  in  the  future 
do  not  seem  to  be  finally  shaped.  The  question 
involves  very  obscure  physiological  and  psycho- 
logical considerations.  A  man  who  aims  to  be- 
come a  novelist  naturally  pries  into  these  matters 
whenever  he  can,  but  the  vital  facts  are  very  often 
hard  to  come  by.  It  is  probable  that  a  great 
number  of  people  could  be  paired  off  in  couples 
who  woidd  make  permanently  happy  and  success- 

333 


ANTICIPATIONS 

ful  monogamic  homes  for  their  sound  and  healthy 
children.  At  any  rate,  if  a  certain  freedom  of  re- 
grouping were  possible  within  a  time  limit,  this 
might  be  so.  But  I  am  convinced  that  a  large  pro- 
portion of  married  couples  in  the  world  to-day  are 
not  completely  and  happily  matched,  that  there 
is  much  mutual  limitation,  mutual  annulment, 
and  mutual  exasperation.  Home  with  an  atmos- 
phere of  contention  is  worse  than  none  for  the 
child,  and  it  is  the  interest  of  the  child,  and  that 
alone,  that  will  be  the  test  of  all  these  things.  I 
do  not  think  that  the  arrangement  in  couples  is 
universally  applicable,  or  that  celibacy  (tempered 
by  sterile  vice)  should  be  its  only  alternative. 
Nor  can  I  see  why  the  union  of  two  childless  peo- 
ple should  have  an  indissoluble  permanence  or  pro- 
hibit an  ampler  grouping.  The  question  is  great- 
ly complicated  by  the  economic  disadvantage  of 
women,  which  makes  wifehood  the  chief  feminine 
profession,  while  only  for  an  incidental  sort  of  man 
is  marriage  a  source  of  income,  and  further  by  the 
fact  that  most  women  have  a  period  of  maximum 
attractiveness  after  which  it  would  be  grossly 
unfair  to  cast  them  aside.  From  the  point  of  view 
we  are  discussing,  the  efficient  mother  who  can 
make  the  best  of  her  children  is  the  most  important 
sort  of  person  in  the  state.  She  is  a  primary  neces- 
sity to  the  coming  civilization  Can  the  wife  in 
any  sort  of  polygamic  arrangement,  or  a  woman 
of  no  assured  status,  attain  to  the  maternal  pos- 

334 


THE    xNEW    REPUBLIC 

sibilities  of  the  ideal  monogamic  wife?  One  is 
disposed  to  answer.  No.  But  then,  on  the  other 
hand,  does  the  ordinary  monogamic  wife  do  that? 
We  are  deahng  with  the  finer  people  of  the  future, 
strongly  individualized  people,  who  will  be  much 
freer  from  stereotyped  moral  suggestions  and 
much  less  inclined  to  be  dealt  with  wholesale  than 
the  people  of  to-day. 

I  have  already  shown  cause  in  these  Anticipa- 
tions to  expect  a  period  of  disorder  and  hypocrisy 
in  matters  of  sexual  morality.  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that,  when  the  new  republic  emerges  on 
the  other  side  of  this  disorder,  there  will  be  a  great 
number  of  marriage  contracts  possible  between 
men  and  women,  and  that  the  strong  arm  of  the 
state  will  insist  only  upon  one  thing — the  security 
and  welfare  of  the  child.  The  inevitable  removal 
of  births  from  the  sphere  of  an  uncontrollable 
Providence  to  the  category  of  deliberate  acts,  will 
enormously  enhance  the  responsibility  of  the 
parent — and  of  the  state  that  has  failed  to  ade- 
quately discourage  the  philoprogenitiveness  of 
the  parent — towards  the  child.  Having  permitted 
the  child  to  come  into  existence,  public  policy 
and  the  older  standard  of  justice  alike  demand, 
under  these  new  conditions,  that  it  must  be  fed, 
cherished,  and  educated,  not  merely  up  to  a  re- 
spectable minimum,  but  up  to  the  full  height  of 
its  possibilities.  The  state  will,  therefore,  be  the 
reserve   guardian   of   all   children.     If   they   are 

335 


ANTICIPATIONS 

being  under-nourished,  if  their  education  is  being 
neglected,  the  state  will  step  in,  take  over  the  re- 
sponsibility of  their  management,  and  enforce 
their  charge  upon  the  parents.  The  first  liability 
of  a  parent  will  be  to  his  child,  and  for  his  child; 
even  the  dues  of  that  darling  of  our  current  law, 
the  landlord,  will  stand  second  to  that.  This  con- 
ception of  the  responsibility  of  the  parents  and 
the  state  to  the  child  and  the  future  runs  quite 
counter  to  the  general  ideas  of  to-day.  These 
general  ideas  distort  grim  realities.  Under  the 
most  pious  and  amiable  professions,  all  the  Chris- 
tian states  of  to-day  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  en- 
gaged in  slave-breeding.  The  chief  result,  though 
of  course  it  is  not  the  intention,  of  the  activities  of 
priest  and  moralist  to-day  in  these  matters,  is  to 
lure  a  vast  multitude  of  little  souls  into  this  world 
for  whom  there  is  neither  sufi&cient  food,  nor  love, 
nor  schools,  nor  any  prospect  at  all  in  life  but 
the  insufficient  bread  of  servitude.  It  is  a  result 
that  endears  religion  and  purity  to  the  sweating 
employer,  and  leads  unimaginative  bishops  who 
have  never  missed  a  meal  in  their  lives,  and  who 
know  nothing  of  the  indescribable  bitterness  of  a 
handicapped  entry  into  this  world,  to  draw  a  com- 
placent contrast  with  irreligious  France.  It  is  a 
result  that  must  necessarily  be  recognized  in  its 
reality  and  faced  by  those  men  who  will  present- 
Ij^  emerge  to  rule  the  world;  men  who  will  have 
neither  the  plea  of  ignorance  nor  moral  stupidity, 

336 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

nor  dogmatic  revelation  to  excuse  such  elaborate 
cruelty. 

And  having  set  themselves  in  these  ways  to  raise 
the  quality  of  human  birth,  the  new  republicans 
will  see  to  it  that  the  children  who  do  at  last  effect- 
ually get  born  come  into  a  world  of  spacious  op- 
portunity. The  half-educated,  unskilled  pretend- 
ers, professing  impossible  creeds  and  propoimding 
ridiculous  curricula,  to  whom  the  imhappy  parents 
of  to-day  must  needs  intrust  the  intelligences  of  their 
children — these  heavy-handed  barber-surgeons  of 
the  mind,  these  school-masters,  with  their  rag-tag 
and  bob-tail  of  sweated  and  unqualified  assistants, 
will  be  succeeded  by  capable,  self-respecting  men 
and  women,  constituting  the  most  important  pro- 
fession of  the  world.  The  wind3''  pretences  of 
"forming  character,"  supplying  moral  training, 
and  so  forth,  under  which  the  educationalist  of 
to-day  conceals  the  fact  that  he  is  incapable  of  his 
proper  task  of  training,  developing,  and  equipping 
the  mind,  will  no  longer  be  made  by  the  teacher. 
Nor  will  the  .teacher  be  permitted  to  subordinate 
his  duties  to  the  entirely  irrelevant  business  of 
his  pupils'  sports.  The  teacher  will  teach,  and 
confine  his  moral  training,  bej^ond  enforcing 
truth  and  discipline,  to  the  exhibition  of  a  capable 
person  doing  his  duty  as  well  as  it  can  be  done.  He 
will  know  that  his  utmost  province  is  only  a  part 
of  the  educational  process,  that  equally  important 
educational  influences  are  the  home  and  the  world 
"  337 


ANTICIPATIONS 

of  thought  about  the  pupil  and  himself.  The  whole 
world  will  be  thinking  and  learning ;  the  old  idea  of 
"completing"  one's  education  will  have  vanished 
with  the  fancy  of  a  static  universe;  every  school 
will  be  a  preparatory  school,  every  college.  The 
school  and  college  will  probably  give  only  the  keys 
and  apparatus  of  thought,  a  necessary  language  or 
so,  thoroughly  done,  a  sound  mathematical  train- 
ing, drawing,  a  wide  and  reasoned  view  of  philoso- 
phy, some  good  exercises  in  dialectics,  a  training 
in  the  use  of  those  stores  of  fact  that  science  has 
made.  So  equipped,  the  young  man  and  young 
woman  will  go  on  to  the  technical  school  of  their 
chosen  profession,  and  to  the  criticism  of  contem- 
porary practice  for  their  special  efficiency,  and  to 
the  literature  of  contemporary  thought  for  their 
general  development. 

And  while  the  emergent  new  republic  is  decid- 
ing to  provide  for  the  swarming  inferiority  of  the 
abyss,  and  developing  the  morality  and  educa- 
tional system  of  the  future  in  this  fashion,  it  will 
be  attacking  that  mass  of  irresponsible  property 
that  is  so  unavoidable  and  so  threatening  under 
present  conditions.  The  attack  will,  of  course, 
be  made  along  lines  that  the  developing  science 
of  economics  will  trace  in  the  days  immediately 
before  us.  A  scheme  of  death  duties  and  of  heavy 
graduated  taxes  upon  irresponsible  incomes,  with 
perhaps,  in  addition,  a  system  of  terminable  lia- 
bility for  borrowers,  will  probably  suffice  to  control 

338 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

the  growth  of  this  creditor  elephantiasis.  The 
detailed  contrivances  are  for  the  specialist  to  make. 
If  there  is  such  a  thing  as  bitterness  in  the  public 
acts  of  the  new  republicans,  it  will  probably  be 
found  in  the  measures  that  will  be  directed  against 
those  who  are  parasitic,  or  who  attempt  to  be 
parasitic,  upon  the  social  body,  either  by  means 
of  gambling,  by  manipulating  the  medium  of 
exchange,  or  b}'^  such  interventions  upon  legitimate 
transactions  as,  for  example,  the  legal  trade  union 
in  Great  Britain  contrives  in  the  case  of  house 
property  and  land.  Simply  because  he  fails  more 
often  than  he  succeeds,  there  is  still  a  disposition 
among  sentimental  people  to  regard  the  gambler 
or  the  speculator  as  rather  a  dashing,  adventurous 
sort  of  person,  and  to  contrast  his  picturesque 
gallantry  with  the  sober  certainties  of  honest  men. 
The  men  of  the  new  republic  will  be  obtuse  to  the 
glamour  of  such  romance;  they  will  regard  the 
gambler  simply  as  a  mean  creature  who  hangs 
about  the  social  body  in  the  hope  of  getting  some- 
thing for  nothing,  who  runs  risks  to  filch  the  pos- 
sessions of  other  men,  exactly  as  a  thief  does. 
They  will  put  the  two  on  a  footing,  and  the  gener- 
ous gambler,  like  the  kindly  drunkard,  in  the  face 
of  their  effectual  provision  for  his  little  weakness, 
will  cease  to  complain  that  his  worst  enemy  is  him- 
self. And,  in  dealing  with  speculation,  the  new  re- 
public will  have  the  power  of  an  assured  faith  and 
purpose,  and  the  resources  of  an  economic  science 

339 


ANTICIPATIONS 

that  is  as  yet  only  in  its  infancy.  In  such  matters 
the  new  repubUc  will  entertain  no  superstition  of 
laissez  faire.  Money  and  credit  are  as  much  hu- 
man contrivances  as  bicycles,  and  as  liable  to  ex- 
pansion and  modification  as  any  other  sort  of 
prevalent  but  imperfect  machine. 

And  how  will  the  new  republic  treat  the  in- 
ferior races?  How  will  it  deal  with  the  black? 
how  will  it  deal  with  the  yellow  man?  how  will 
it  tackle  that  alleged  termite  in  the  civilized  wood- 
work, the  Jew?  Certainly  not  as  races  at  all. 
It  will  aim  to  establish,  and  it  will  at  last,  though 
probably  only  after  a  second  century  has  passed, 
establish  a  world  state  with  a  common  language 
and  a  common  rule.  All  over  the  world  its  roads, 
its  standards,  its  laws,  and  its  apparatus  of  control 
will  run.  It  will,  I  have  said,  make  the  multiplica- 
tion of  those  who  fall  behind  a  certain  standard 
of  social  efficiency  unpleasant  and  difficult,  and 
it  will  have  cast  aside  any  coddling  laws  to  save 
adult  men  from  themselves.*  It  will  tolerate  no 
dark  corners  where  the  people  of  the  abyss  may 
fester,  no  vast,  diffused  slums  of  peasant  proprie- 
tors, no  stagnant  plague-preserves.  Whatever 
men  may  come  into  its  efficient  citizenship  it  will 
let  come — white,  black,  red,  or  brown;  the  ef- 
ficiency will  be  the  test.  And  the  Jew  also  it  will 
treat  as  any  other  man.     It  is  said  that  the  Jew 

•  Vide  Mr.  Archdall  Read's  excellent  and  suggestive  book. 
The  Present  Evolution  of  Man. 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

is  incurably  a  parasite  on  the  apparatus  of  credit. 
If  there  are  parasites  on  the  apparatus  of  credit, 
that  is  a  reason  for  the  legislative  cleaning  of  the 
apparatus  of  credit,  but  it  is  no  reason  for  the 
special  treatment  of  the  Jew.  If  the  Jew  has  a 
certain  incurable  tendency  to  social  parasitism, 
and  we  make  social  parasitism  impossible,  we  shall 
abolish  the  Jew,  and,  if  he  has  not,  there  is  no 
need  to  abolish  the  Jew.  We  are  much  more 
likely  to  find  we  have  abolished  the  Caucasian 
solicitor.  I  really  do  not  understand  the  excep- 
tional attitude  people  take  up  against  the  Jews. 
There  is  something  very  ugly  about  many  Jewish 
faces,  but  there  are  Gentile  faces  just  as  coarse 
and  gross.  The  Jew  asserts  himself  in  relation 
to  his  nationality  with  a  singular  tactlessness, 
but  it  is  hardly  for  the  EngHsh  to  blame  that. 
Many  Jews  are  intensely  vulgar  in  dress  and 
bearing,  materialistic  in  thought,  and  cimning 
and  base  in  method,  but  not  more  so  than  many 
Gentiles.  The  Jew  is  mentally  and  physically 
precocious,  and  he  ages  and  dies  sooner  than  the 
average  European,  but  in  tliat  and  in  a  certain  dis- 
ingenuousness  he  is  simply  on  all  fours  with  the 
short,  dark  Welsh.  He  foregathers  with  those  of 
his  own  nation,  and  favors  them  against  the  stran- 
ger, but  so  do  the  Scotch.  I  see  nothing  in  his 
curious,  dispersed  nationality  to  dread  or  dislike. 
He  is  a  remnant  and  legacy  of  mediaevalism,  a 
sentimentalist,    perhaps,    but   no    furtive   plotter 

341 


ANTICIPATIONS 

against  the  present  progress  of  things.  He  was 
the  mediaeval  hberal;  his  persistent  existence 
gave  the  he  to  Cathohc  pretensions  -all  through 
the  days  of  their  ascendency,  and  to-day  he  gives 
the  He  to  all  our  yapping  "nationalism/'  and 
sketches  in  his  dispersed  sympathies  the  coming 
of  the  world-state.  He  has  never  been  known  to 
burke  a  school ;  such  a  malicious  plot  as  that  as- 
sociated with  the  name  of  Lord  Hugh  Cecil,  to  rob 
the  struggling  adolescents  of  the  poorer  middle- 
class  of  their  chance  of  an  education  by  burk- 
ing the  higher  grade  board  schools,  would  cer- 
tainly be  beneath  the  mental  level  of  the  average 
Whitechapel  Jew.  Much  of  the  Jew's  usury  is  no 
more  than  social  scavenging.  The  Jew  will  pro- 
bably lose  much  of  his  particularism,  intermarry 
with  Gentiles,  and  cease  to  be  a  physically  distinct 
element  in  human  affairs  in  a  century  or  so.  But 
much  of  his  moral  tradition  will,  I  hope,  never 
die.  .  .  .  And  for  the  rest,  those  swarms  of 
black,  and  brown,  and  dirty-white,  and  yellow 
people,  who  do  not  come  into  the  new  needs  of 
efficiency? 

Well,  the  world  is  a  world,  not  a  charitable  in- 
stitution, and  I  take  it  they  will  have  to  go.  The 
whole  tenor  and  meaning  of  the  world,  as  I  see  it, 
is  that  they  have  to  go.  So  far  as  they  fail  to 
develop  sane,  vigorous,  and  distinctive  personali- 
ties for  the  great  world  of  the  future,  it  is  their 
portion  to  die  out  and  disappear. 

342 


THE    NEW    REPUBLIC 

The  world  has  a  purpose  greater  than  happi- 
ness ;  our  hves  are  to  serve  God's  purpose,  and  that 
purpose  aims  not  at  man  eis  an  end,  but  works 
through  him  to  greater  issues.  .  .  .  This,  I  be- 
Heve,  will  be  the  distinctive  quality  of  the  new  re- 
publican's belief.  And,  for  that  reason,  I  have  not 
even  speculated  whether  he  will  hold  any  belief 
in  human  immortality  or  no.  He  will  certainly 
not  believe  there  is  any  post-mortem  state  of  re- 
wards and  punishments  because  of  his  faith  in 
the  sanity  of  God,  and  I  do  not  see  how  he  will 
trace  any  reaction  between  this  world  and  what- 
ever world  there  may  be  of  disembodied  lives. 
Active  and  capable  men  of  all  forms  of  religious 
profession  to-day  tend  in  practice  to  disregard 
the  question  of  immortality  altogether.  So,  to  a 
greater  degree,  will  the  kinetic  men  of  the  coming 
time.  We  may  find  that  issue  interesting  enough 
when  we  turn  over  the  leaf,  but  at  present  we  have 
not  turned  over  the  leaf.  On  this  side,  in  this  life, 
the  relevancy  of  things  points  not  in  the  slightest 
towards  the  immortality  of  our  egotisms,  but  con- 
vergently  and  overpoweringly  to  the  future  of  our 
race,  to  that  spacious  future,  of  which  these  weak, 
ambitious  Anticipations  are,  as  it  were,  the  dim 
reflection  seen  in  a  shallow  and  troubled  pool. 

For  that  future  these  men  will  live  and  die. 


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